Tampa developer: turn abandoned school into teacher town homes & condos under community land trust

Posted at 9:28 AM, Jul. 25, 2007

He wants to turn an abandoned school building---the former Euclid Elementary School in St. Petersburg, now Euclid Center---into condominiums and town homes teachers can afford to buy. For now, the school board is listening.

So is the media. Jane Meinhardt broke the story in Tampa Bay Business Journal six weeks ago. Last week Paul Swider followed up in the St. Petersburg Times. On Friday, Isabel Mascareñas at WTSP-TV Channel 10 did it again---with video.

"It's really a brilliant idea," says Nick Pavonetti, right, founder and managing director of PDC Affordable Housing in St. Petersburg. One of Fla.'s leading affordable housing consultants, the former banker and commercial developer would like to partner with Shea and build town homes designed to complement the two-story red brick school house built in 1925 (Meinhardt) or 1940 (Swider).

Shea, who lives across the street from the school facility, envisions nine condos in the building shell and 10-12 new town homes on the nearly two-acre site---much of which is now covered by parking lot. The project could get under way as early as next year, Shea says.

First, a community land trust

Shea told Meinhardt he wants St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership to form a community land trust and convince the school board to deed Euclid Center over. Taking land costs out of the equation---and utilizing economical construction techniques like Pavonetti's modular two-story town homes---could deliver three-bedroom homes priced as low as $170,000, within reach of a teacher's salary.

"Don Shea has done his homework," said Pavonetti. "A community land trust could assure that the homes remain affordable to the next generation of teachers."

Pinellas schools superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox, right, said Shea's proposal might be dicey. Not all teachers would qualify , he told Swider at the St. Pete Times, and and that could raise legal issues. But, Swider reports, Wilcox thinks they can work a deal.

Dave Metz, St. Petersburg's deputy mayor for neighborhoods, told Swider the city plans to put some of its property near Mercy Hospital into a land trust and let Habitat for Humanity and Grady Pridgen build an affordable-housing development.

The school-recycling-as-community land trust strategy might be the first of its kind in the U.S. And it might be one that other Fla. counties will adopt as young families move away in search of more affordable places to live and Fla. public school enrollments decline.