Friday morning, construction crews will break ground on a new 41-story condo tower that will have a hotel and thousands of feet of retail space. It's going to be the tallest building in all of Pinellas County.
Imagine how long a football field is.
Now, imagine 1 and a half football fields stacked up right in the downtown St Pete Skyline.
One St Petersburg will be on First Avenue North and encompass an entire city block between Central, 2nd Avenue South and 1st Street N.
The construction is starting several weeks ahead of schedule because the developers have seen so much demand for the new enormous high rise and others like it in downtown St Pete. In fact, they expect to have all 253 condos (which range in price from $500,000 to $3,000,000 sold before they even open the condo building.
As the area continues to grow and the new St Pete Pier design comes along, more people are showing interest in moving to downtown.
The skylines will also impact air traffic into and out of Albert Whitted Airport. The One St Petersburg tower will be so tall in fact that the companies working to build it, have to persuade the Federal Aviation Administration to raise the allowed skyrise height to 500 feet.
The One St Petersburg tower is one of 1,200 residential units either recently completed or under construction right now. In Tampa, at least a dozen projects are underway now that will double the amount of people living in downtown.
City leaders aren't certain how traffic and parking will be impacted once a handful of new large condo open over the next 3 years, but tell 10News its likely they'll have to find a solution to parking and traffic once hundreds of new residents move in.
Developers for One St Petersburg tell us 2/3 of the condo buyers are from Florida so far and the other 1/3 are from across the country and the world.
