Behind-the-scenes look at the $6.8B Gas Plant proposal

The fuel to revitalize the long-neglected Historic Gas Plant District in downtown St. Petersburg could come from what, on the surface, seems like an unusual trio: a developer with a penchant for historical architecture; one of the most prominent and successful Wall Street tech investors of the past decade; and the leader of the one largest minority-owned construction firms in the Southeast. 

In people, that’s Casey Ellison founder and CEO of Ellison Cos., Cathie Wood of CEO and chief investment officer of ARK Invest and Jonathan Graham, president of Horus Construction. Those three, under an entity named ARK Ellison Horus LLC, submitted a $6.8 billion unsolicited proposal Oct 3 to, according to a statement, “reimagine St. Petersburg’s Historic Gas Plant District as a world-class epicenter of innovation, culture and community.” A fourth entity in the project, Baker Barrios, was named the master planner architect.