CLEARWATER — Over the past five years, 15 new developments have sprung up along U.S. 19 — just not the type that city leaders were really hoping for.
When the city revamped development standards for the 7-mile stretch of U.S. 19 in 2017, they were trying to lure corporate headquarters or technology hubs with high-paying jobs and mixed-use projects where people could live, work and socialize.
Instead they got five stand-alone apartment complexes, a hotel, two self-storage warehouses, and a few gas stations, restaurants and retail stores.
Mayor Frank Hibbard is so concerned about this trajectory that he asked City Manager Jon Jennings to look into a building moratorium for U.S. 19 until the city could figure out how to guide more desirable development.
During a Monday work session, the city’s other elected officials, along with staff, showed no appetite to pursue any kind of moratorium. But they mulled a series of strategies, like incentives and marketing, that they hope can help U.S. 19 better compete with economic centers like Westshore City Center in Tampa or the State Road 54 corridor in Trinity.
“I believe strongly that the U.S. 19 corridor really is next,” said Denise Sanderson, the city’s economic development and housing director. “A lot of the engagement that we’re having with our site selectors, developers and brokers is that they are recognizing that they need to find new markets.”
The corridor has faced challenges that have made competing difficult, city staff explained. City officials began planning for the redevelopment of U.S. 19 in 2008, around the time the state began conducting major reconstruction of overpasses and frontage lanes. Multiple local and state-run studies are out there to improve mobility, but U.S. 19 remains pretty unfriendly for pedestrians and bicyclists.
U.S. 19 has largely been viewed by investors as a retail center with only 25 percent of commercial land being used for office and 5 percent for industrial, according to a report prepared by the city’s planning department.
And a built-out corridor like U.S. 19 can struggle to compete with areas in Hillsborough and Pasco counties, which have more vacant land that doesn’t come with the same demolition or contamination complications.
“Transforming this 7-mile corridor is something that’s not going to happen overnight,” planning and development director Gina Clayton said. “I think we have to remember that the redevelopment cycle typically starts with the addition of new housing in an area and obviously that is occurring here, and once people are here living here, then typically you would find services and retail uses following and then ultimately the jobs.”
Sanderson said the city should support placing a referendum question on the November ballot about renewing a tax exemption program for another 10 years to offer up to 100 percent reduction of property taxes for certain qualifying job creators. The city’s current program, passed by voters in 2012, offers a 75 percent reduction and has been applied to two businesses in the last decade, Sanderson said.
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Explore all your optionsSanderson said another option is for the city to create a tax increment financing district to encompass U.S. 19, which would take a portion of property taxes for reinvesting in the area.
Clayton’s report also suggested creating a dedicated funding source to provide incentives to desired businesses and industries. Sanderson said the city should also encourage Pinellas County to launch a program that would allow cities to apply for Penny for Pinellas 1-cent sales tax revenue to pay for land assembly or site preparation for economic development uses.
“The greatest challenge in attracting development is surety and predictability within the marketplace, and I think conversations like this are a little bit frightening,” Sanderson said about the moratorium discussion. “So I think we need to be fully committed and certainly establish programs and incentives that people can access when they follow certain rules.”
Hibbard said while he did receive some angry phone calls from developers who heard whispers of the moratorium, the discussion was necessary. He recalled the early 2000s when incessant condominium construction on Clearwater Beach was threatening the tourism market. He said the city discussed a moratorium at the time but instead developed policies that incentivized hotels, which helped shape the beach into the international destination it is today.
“We wouldn’t have had this conversation had I not raised a moratorium, so I think it was productive and I’m not frightened by it one little bit,” Hibbard said in the Monday work session.
Jennings, the city manager, said he expects his office will take input from Monday’s discussion to formulate an action plan for next steps.
“This was a needed conversation,” Jennings said.
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