Sneak peak: Wednesday's story on Tuesday

I'm working on a story for tomorrow's paper that should go somthing like this:

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Times Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG — The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is asking the city to place a deed restriction on Tropicana Field saying that soil underneath the dome’s asphalt parking lots is contaminated.

But it’s unclear if the state regulatory agency’s request, which was first made in 2000 and is being renewed this month, impacts the possible redevelopment of the stadium property the city is now considering.

The state DEP has asked the city to respond with potential language for a deed restriction by early July.
Pamala Vazquez, a spokesperson for the agency, said regulators would not comment on a possible redevelopment until a formal application was submitted. So far, she said, that has not happened.

She also said she did not know if the deed restriction would apply to the entire 86-acre property or only a portion of it.

“Until we have a formal permit application in house, we don’t speculate about a property or what someone might want to do or what they might be able to do,” Vazquez said.

The two developers bidding to purchase Tropicana Field have known that parts of the 86-acre property are contaminated by a former gas manufacturing plant. But the extent of the contamination has been left open for much speculation.

The city, and to a certain extent the prospective developers, have said the environmental damage remaining on the property is minimal.

People opposing the redevelopment and the larger plan to build a $450-million downtown suggest the impacts – and potential clean-up costs – are much greater.

Vazquez said the Tropicana Field site is currently permitted for industrial use. If the city or a developer wished to change that use, the state would need to sign off on the plans, Vazquez said.

The city, of course, is considering proposals to turn the 86-acre stadium property into a mix of retail, residential and office buildings.

Comments

[get-smart]

And Now There Are Two

Published Thursday, August 17, 2012 09:25 AM
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St.Petersburg - St Petersburg now has two stadiums. The City Council voted yesterday in a special session to scrap the re-development of the Tropicana Field site for now. After receiveing three bids on the enviromental clean-up of the Trop site, the Council decided that the clean-up was too costly for the city at this time. How this vote affects the financing of the new LaLang Stadium will be taken up in another special session next week.

The lowest bid was $125 million by the CleanSouth Co. The two other bidders were FirstDump Corp. at $128 million and Tidy Clean at $137 million. The contracts with the Rays and site developers states that the city will pickup all costs associated with the remediation of the Trop.

In addition, By rushing into the contracts back in 2009, the city signed away its right to generate income from the Trop parking lot on game days.

Councilmen Jackson said after the vote, "With that kindda ka-ching, I can getta lotta 'Bling.'" Councilwomen Needly remarked, "Our next option is to see if we can re-design the Trop into a multi-function arena and ballet center. One good thing about the Trop though, is you can't go wrong with one of their corn dogs."

By:Cub Reporter
FutureNews

[John]

Gee, that bid from Hines just got cut in half unless the city (or the Rays?)agree to pay for all remediation on the Trop site to lift the deed restriction and get the land-use/zoning changes approved. Remediation could take years, effectively killing this deal because the construction on both sites will be delayed beyond what the Rays planned for and will increase the cost of construction immensley. This is the beginning of the end of this ridiculous waste of everyone's time.

I'd like to thank the BOCC, The Tourist Development Council, The Beach Mayors, The North County Neighborhood Association, CONA, POWW, The Department of Environmental PROTECTION, and the State of Florida for their assistance.

No thanks to the City Council or the Times for their role in this corporate welfare scheme.

[Chris Jenkins]

Which was the point I made over and over again when mentioning the environmental concerns. It's not about the manatees, people...it affects the bottom line.

[Tracy]

I wouldn't be suprised if one or both developers rescind their bids on the Trop property until the city can tell them EXACTLY how much it will cost to clean this site up and who will pay for it. Not good.

[Don Mott]

One more Bayer moment for Mr. Kalt who says we can work around that. We'll get back to you in June of 2010 to let you know how.

[Chuck]

This just in...

Hamilton Hansen, active POWW member, is in favor of teacher pay cuts.

Check the board meeting if you don't believe me.

[Gadfly]

It was POWW I believe which brought to the public's attention that a deed restriction has been asked for by the FDEP since 2000 of the City of St. Petersburg.

The City of St. Pete has stonewalled the FDEP, a state agency, for over eight years on this matter.

How does the city get away with this?

Until that deed restriction is filed with the FDEP and accepted the first and original application is not completed and is not closed out. That must be done first before another application can be submitted.

And by the way, don't you just love the way the FDEP will not talk to the public about anything until an application is submitted. Talk about your state agency hiding from the public that they are sworn to protect.

What is going on here with this project.

Just who is getting paid off?

[Jon McPhee]

The civics lesson continues. People that follow all this closely will learn a lot about how the legal and political processes actually work, as compared to the idealized stuff you might possibly get out of a 6th grade American Civ text these days.

The Rays owners understand this stuff pretty well. They know there's the "surface law," like constitutions, sessions laws, statutes and codes, and regulations.

They also know there's the "hidden law," which exists in opinions and interpretory memoranda and letters of understanding and executive orders and certain precedents and in the organizational mind and memory of the people who populate administrative agencies and legislative bureaus and clerk's offices.

And they know, or know where to find, people who know the "secret law," which is the network of relationships and understandings and shared nudges and winks and, occasionally, corruption. Hiring someone like Clearwater land use attorney Ed Armstrong gets them expertise and access to all of these. Just like most lobbyists are folks who either served or served in the legislature, executive offices or regulatory agencies -- they know intimately where the hidden and secret law can be found and made to apply.

Hey, I am enough of a cynic (as in "disappointed romantic") to know that this is how it always was, is and will be. But there are times when the powers that be come up against a big enough mass with enough inertia to resist the hidden pressures and force a result that's better for the whole populace. Maybe that will happen in the case of the "stadium subsidy, despite the best efforts of the Pied Pipers of Manhattan, who hope to lead all the mice out of their own town, so they can walk from bar to bar like Ybor, and maybe shop at a high-end retailer who might bite at locating on a Trop redevelpment so they won't have to drive all the way across the bridge to Tampa, and smoke Cubans in the suites of their $9 million, publicly purchased new office building.

So watch how all this evolves, folks. The "pros" here will sneer at what I'm saying, as usual, but ask any attorney who's practiced environmental or zoning or development or other regulatory law if this ain't how it actually works.

If people divvy up the tasks of identifying and watching and shining a light on every spot where the Eds of the world try to apply the levers of the hidden and secret law, the kind of stuff that Mr. Troxler and Mr. Sharockman and others do, the chances of a healthy outcome for the community will go up.

[Bill]

Aaron oh Aaron! You and the Times best come to your senses to save at least a modicum of credibility. The new stadium scheme is 100% public financing, period. The environemtal permits take months past the referendum, and finally the presumptiousness of the Rays and Council that the people can be fooled all the time is finally proving untrue. If the Council does not stop this in it's tracks now, we will all pay dearly for decades to come.

[Jason]

It's a Brownfield not a dump. They are going to remediate toy town for development. This site is nothing in comparison.

Also the gas plant didn't cover the entire site. There was a lot of residential in there that is clean. Lets don't forget that the real reason we have so much parking and vacant land there is because we bulldozed poverty out of the downtown. This was private land that was made public and should be returned to our downtown and the tax base. With the insertion of the interstate 175 and 375 we have no where else to grow.

You get a lot of LEED points for the sustainable design of a building on a brownfield. We are the Green city now.

I would agree that the city should have a set allowance and over runs should be paid by the developer but please give us back 86 acres of our downtown.

[Don Mott]

Jason, I think the State has said that it is their decision to make didn't they?

[Jason]

FDEP and SWFWMD permits only need to be in place by the time the permit is ready to be issued. If they have their ducks in a row those permits don't actually take that long.

The Trop site could also be subdivided and permitted independently. Portions of the site that have completed stage one and two environmental reports showing no contamination could go into construction.

Most of the testing would have already be done for the original construction so the city should already have a idea of whats left. They haven't lifted any large red flags on it thus far.

Whether it's this generation or your kids the city will need to eventually clean up the soil. Even if you rebuilt the trop in 20 years on the parking lot like the Bucs did your going to have to clean it up. In that scenario the city would still own the land and would be fully responsible for clean up.

In the current proposal the city should try and put as much responsibility on the private entity as possible. Please nallow the negotiation to take place.

Don't delay the inevitable. This could be a long term win for the downtown.

[Don Mott]

Jason I would disagree. The basis of the Rays finance plans relies on the entire 86 acre site. No subdividing and waiting for government reports. They are promising immediate revenues. And to say DEP and Swiftmud reports don't take long is questionable. Most likely they wouldn't issue rulings for a year or more. So how can anyone vote on a project with so many questions and few answers? What's the difference if we pay for the cleanup now or later? The developers have already stated in their bids that they will not be responsible for the costs.

[Jason]

Don,
What portion do you believe is determined by the state? The Brownfield and extent of clean up is a measurable amount based on soil testing by a third party. FDEP is really concerned with containment rather just arbitrary removal. They don't want the developer introducing new runoff or retention in a way that introduces the pollutants to the stormwater system. This can be accomodated fairly reasonably. Areas of the development that aren't built on or are parking lots would probably not require remediation.

In some cases they would even allow you to build on a landfill(which this isn't)as long as test wells show no gas being released. It would take piles and be expensive but not impossible. For the developer it's cost versus return.

Every gas station redevelopment on 4th street has gone through the same process. If they built the retail and office components in the first phase I think the housing would be supported after the market returns.

Hopefully the cities grid will continue through the site and eventually blend back into the rest of the downtown. I'm not in favor of a superblock type concept but I do believe that the opportunity to take back almost a forth of our downtown is worth taking a hard look at.

[Don Mott]

I might add that this will most likely have a large effect on the developers plans. I'm not sure they would be interested in subdividing and waiting for a state bureaucracy to "maybe" approve their plans.

[Don Mott]

"What portion do you believe is determined by the state"? Well Jason as near as I can tell from the above report it would be the whole portion. "Vazquez said the Tropicana Field site is currently permitted for industrial use. If the city or a developer wished to change that use, the state would need to sign off on the plans, Vazquez said."

[Jason]

Don,
Prior to submittal a pre-application meeting is held to make sure the engineer is going to meet expectations of FDEP. The process is 60days for initial application review. Comments are made by the reviewer and then the engineers response to comments are then reviewed within 30 days, repeat if needed. Any development will require the improvement of existing conditions so they will be more than willing to work with the engineers. Even if it takes a year the plans will take longer than that so the schedule is still held.

Any large development has similiar hurdles that are overcome. I think the political headaches are the real hurdle.

The developers were asked for proposals not bids which means anything can be negotiated within that proposal. If it were a bid that type of exclusion in the scope of work would render them non compliant and throw their bid out.(that is if soil testing and removal was required by the project specifications.)

These type of permitting issues are minor and should really not be in the equation. Nail down the cost liability exposure to the city and decide whether the end product is good for the community.

[Jason]

Don,
Every developer has to wait on approvals. It's a known quantity. If you do XYZ they will be approved.
FDEP says they have the right to approve a change from industrial to say residential because it means a different occupancy above possible pollutants. If you verify there is no danger or remove the pollutants than they can't hold up the process. Approval for the change in use then just falls on the local EDC commission.

This process was completed successfully when the dome was built originally.

Also I think your mis-understanding the context of re-platting the land or dividing it for the purpose of permitting and developing. This doesn't effect the project as a whole. Essentially it could providing zoning within the developement. A fee simple townhome development may be many acres but is different legal lots and the site plan could be approved in various phases.

You could really make the same argument for building a house in St. Petersburgs neighborhood design review. You may or may not get to build what you want if you ignore regulations but if you look at the code and respond accordingly you will be able to build successfully.

FDEP can not prevent this development if their regulations are met.

[Jason]

Don one last response
The immediate revenues promised will be provided by taxes on the existing land and building. They don't have to complete their plans a break ground day one. Thats impossible.

[Howard Troxler]

Hi y'all. I posted two pieces of correspondence between the DEP and the city on TroxBlog, along with some other thoughts. Here's the item:

http://blogs.tampabay.com/troxler/2008/05/the-tropicana-f.html

[Rick K]

Okay, so I found Trox's post (follow his link, above) to be interesting.