Metro Development, Porter Development Start Work on St. Pete Apartments
It's the first phase of a three-stage development with more than 1,000 units.
A joint venture Metro Development Group and Porter Development has broken ground on the first phase of Azalea Cay, which will include 341 apartments in St. Petersburg, Fla. The developers are planning three phases altogether for the community, which will ultimately include 1,056 units.
Azalea Cay, located at 1501 72nd Street North, is a mixed-income project. In the first phase, 51 units will be available to households earning at or below 80 percent of the area median income, while another 51 units will be available to households earning at or below 120 percent of the AMI. The remaining 239 apartments will be market rate.
Porter Development recently secured $63.5 million in financing for Azalea Cay. The project is being supported by $11.25 million in combined public investment. The city of St. Petersburg has provided an additional $6 million for the first phase, while Pinellas County committed $5.25 million in Penny for Pinellas affordable housing funds.
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The developers have not yet specified common-area amenities for Azalea Cay. The project represents a revision of previous plans for a mixed-income community known as Azalea Gateway, which was proposed early in the 2020s and has since undergone a number of modifications. Before that, a sports center was proposed for the site, which used to be an office campus for RTX.
Tampa-based Metro Development Group has developed more than 100,000 residential lots, 5,000 multifamily units, and 35 million square feet of commercial space in more than 70 completed communities. The private company has partnered with such residential developers as Lennar, D.R. Horton, KB Home, Pulte, and Dream Finders.
Tampa-area multifamily development still brisk
The Tampa-St. Petersburg market added 3,128 units, or 1.1 percent of existing multifamily stock year-to-date as of May, according to Yardi Matrix data, which is 40 basis points above the U.S. average. The market’s pipeline is also robust, with 16,146 units under way as of the same month. Rents have barely budged, however, with average advertised asking rates edging up 0.1 percent on a trailing three-month basis through May.
In June, Related Group started construction on Manor Riverwalk District, a 369-unit luxury residential tower in Tampa. The 24-story tower will rise just south of the former Manor Riverwalk community, also developed by Related and renamed as Arabelle Riverwalk.
That same month, Woodfield Development broke ground on Connerton Apartments, a 270-unit community in Land O’ Lakes, Fla., and part of the Connerton master-planned project. Woodfield bought the almost 18-acre site in December of last year.
