Quote of the Week

“I think we're only in the second inning in terms of what's going to happen in Tampa, and maybe the third inning in what's going to happen in St. Petersburg.”

So says Larry Feldman, CEO of Feldman Equities LLC, who together with Tower Realty Partners owns a handful of office buildings in the downtowns of the two cities, including the First Central Tower, Morgan Stanley Tower and City Center building in St. Petersburg and the Wells Fargo Center in Tampa.

Feldman and Tower also are refining designs for Riverwalk Tower, a planned 52-story project that will combine ground-floor retail, upscale residences and Class A office space into Tampa's first mixed-use tower and the first downtown office building since 1992.

Feldman's comments came during Pulse 360 Tampa, an event attended by more than 200 on April 21 sponsored by commercial real estate services firm JLL.

A panel packed with JLL executives seemed to agree with Feldman's assessment.

Jubal Smith, executive vice president of JLL's business incentives and site selection practice group, noted Tampa ranked 10th in the U.S. between 2010 and 2013 for net in-migration out of 381 statistical metropolitan areas nationwide.

And Juliet Potter, a JLL vice president and its director of research, says Tampa's fourth quarter growth, year over year, was nearly double that of the U.S. for 2015, the result of economic drivers such as favorable weather and a relative low cost of doing business.