TURF WAR

By MICHAEL SASSO The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jun 7, 2007

SEMINOLE - When a Kohl's store under construction finally opens, shoppers may bust down the doors to get its Daisy Fuentes and Vera Wang fashions. Other Kohl's stores in the area have drawn big crowds since opening in the fall.

But what kind of jobs that stores such as Kohl's provide, relatively low-paying retail ones, is at the heart of some major soul-searching in Pinellas County.

Unlike eastern Hillsborough County, which has large tracts of vacant land, Pinellas is nearly built-out. Local real estate brokers say high-paying manufacturers are struggling to find land and are starting to look elsewhere to grow.

Now, Pinellas County Economic Development Director Mike Meidel fears that the small amount of industrial land the county has left is being picked away by landowners and developers, who can charge more for condominiums and shopping centers than factories.

In Seminole, there was a minor turf war two years ago over the Kohl's property on Park Street. The developer, The Sembler Co., persuaded the county commission to convert 29 acres of industrial land along Park Street to a commercial designation to accommodate Kohl's. Meidel and his staff opposed the change and hoped to lure a manufacturer.

"The land-use [policy] is really the only barrier to keeping a developer from turning everything into retail," he said on a recent tour of former industrial sites turned into other uses.

In recent months, county leaders have tackled the coming land crunch in a project called Pinellas By Design. There is some debate over whether economic development leaders such as Meidel are sounding a false alarm. Sembler, for one, challenged the idea that Pinellas is starved for industrial land in a report two years ago.

According to the county's planning council, Pinellas has lost about 500 acres of industrial land since 1995 and has about 9,372 acres, most of which is developed. In the past four years, 31 tracts of land representing 264 acres were converted from industrial uses to some other use, according to county statistics.

Some of the converted land is right outside Meidel's office doorstep.

His county agency is in a business park off Ulmerton Road called ICOT. Within that business park, St. Petersburg College has taken over two former industrial buildings for academic and administrative uses. Nearby, a tract of industrial land that wraps around a lake was turned into land for an affordable apartment complex.

Other Important Needs Exist

Protecting industrial land is tricky, because landowners often can make a strong case for its conversion to commercial or residential.

St. Petersburg College needs land to expand, he acknowledged. And who's to say Pinellas - where housing prices and rents have soared - doesn't need affordable housing? In the Kohl's case, the Essilor optical manufacturing plant that had been there shut down about two years ago, and the county had no luck attracting another manufacturer.

However, those competing interests are hurting the county's ability to attract new, high-paying industry, Meidel said. Two years ago, when Meidel's office was trying to keep the Kohl's site industrial, his staff prepared a report saying Pinellas County missed out on landing 11 companies because it didn't have the space they required. Meidel's staff also noted that manufacturers in Pinellas County paid an average wage of $43,388 in 2004, well above the average Pinellas retail wage of $26,071.

Gateway Remains Attractive Area

Two industrial land brokers, John Dunphy of Colliers Arnold and Derek Keys of Cushman & Wakefield, agree that there are few options today for big companies looking to locate or expand in Pinellas County.

The most attractive industrial area left is the Gateway area, near Gandy Boulevard and Interstate 275. That area has several major industrial companies, including Jabil Circuit and L-3 Communications.

However, competition for space there is intense. Dunphy said the county nearly lost one of its longtime medical manufacturers, Halkey-Roberts Corp., when it had trouble finding land for an expansion. The company eventually landed in the Gateway area after looking around for nine months. In the meantime, it had begun scouting for land in east Hillsborough and Manatee counties, Dunphy said.

A Halkey-Roberts official declined to comment.

"I think we'll lose more opportunities than we'll gain, especially with bigger companies," Dunphy said.

Others don't see the situation as so dire. When Sembler was fighting to change the land classification for Kohl's, it hired a prominent economics firm, Fishkind & Associates of Orlando, to study Pinellas' industrial land needs. Two years ago, it found that the county has enough vacant industrial land, 1,738 acres, to satisfy its needs until 2044. What's more, most manufacturers don't need vast swaths of land, they just need an acre or two, Fishkind & Associates said.

Ronnie Duncan, chairman of the Pinellas County Commission, says some industrial land has been turned into residential land, but the county hardly faces a crisis.

The manufacturers that Pinellas wants are relatively "clean," circuit board makers and robotics manufacturers that don't require smokestacks and railroad lines. Duncan said the county can steer clean industries into abandoned Kmart or other big-box stores on U.S. 19, for example.

That is an option, Meidel said. Even so, he frets that much of Pinellas' vacant industrial land is occupied by outdated buildings that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate. Meanwhile, big manufacturers will want big chunks of open land that are near expressways and airports, not buildings miles from the nearest interstate.

"The fact that we're built-out puts us at a real disadvantage," he said. "It can be done, but we just have to work harder."

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7865.