When then-St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman selected Midtown Development rather than Sugar Hill Community Partners to redevelop the 86-acre Tropicana Field site, Sugar Hill never dropped out of the race.
Sugar Hill Community Partners, a development team headed by San Francisco-based developer JMA Ventures and the Machete Group, kept its plans in motion with the hope that the newly elected mayor, Ken Welch, may ultimately select them as the master developer to turn the massive site into a vibrant neighborhood. Welch is expected to make his decision by June 30 for the site.
“We certainly knew that this was not over,” Dave Carlock, founder and President of the Machete Group, told the St. Pete Catalyst during an in-person interview this week, alongside his fellow team members.
“We kept working through it, and would still get together every week to talk about our response,” he said.
The team, similar to Midtown, is proposing to bring a wave of new office developments, residential complexes, restaurants and retail; however, it has put a large emphasis on the creation of a Community Equity Endowment (CEE), which would collect $30 million over the first 20 years and would be used to fund the construction of affordable single-family homes outside of the Trop site and provide grants.
“We wanted to create every opportunity possible for the community to feel truly connected and have a sense of ownership, and how equity should be equal across the board,” Carlock said.
The group was then introduced to Dan Emglini, Managing Director at Emerson Collective Investments LLC. Emerson Collective is a private philanthropic firm dedicated to removing barriers to opportunities, which was founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow and heir of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs.
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