If Pinellas County commissioners give it a thumbs-up, the county could start negotiations soon with a Los Angeles company to develop a major retail and office project on a former county landfill site in St. Petersburg.

This past fall, a selection committee appointed by the Pinellas County Economic Development Authority chose IRG LLC of Los Angeles as the leading candidate to develop the former Toytown landfill site, at Interstate 275 and Roosevelt Boulevard. IRG redevelops corporate properties, closed military bases and large vacant buildings nationwide. It teamed up with a Cincinnati-based shopping center developer, Bear Creek Capital, to develop a proposal for the Toytown property.

Mike Meidel, director of Pinellas County Economic Development and a member of the committee, said the committee will ask the county commission on Jan. 22 to approve negotiations with the IRG team. The county could choose to sell or lease the 240-acre landfill site to the developer, Meidel said.

The committee ranked IRG ahead of three other teams that submitted proposals for the land. In order of ranking, the other entities are:

•Sembler Co. of St. Petersburg. It has teamed up with Real Estate Interests Group of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

•Ryan Companies US of Minneapolis. The commercial real estate company has partnered with Commercial Properties Realty Trust of Baton Rouge, La.

•Tri-City Kart Club. The local racing organization wants to continue to use the land for its events.

Concerned about its second-place ranking, an attorney for Sembler has sent two letters to Pinellas County's purchasing department objecting to the ranking. In one letter, E.D. Armstrong III said the five-person selection committee made procedural errors.

Armstrong said the committee gave too much weight to the IRG team's plan to buy land just south of the landfill site and put housing on it, instead of building housing on the Toytown site. Development of land adjacent to Toytown shouldn't have been factored into the selection process, one letter states. Without the errors, the Sembler team would have been ranked first, Armstrong argued in a letter.

When reached for comment Tuesday, Armstrong declined to comment further.

Sembler Co., chaired by Republican Party fundraiser Mel Sembler, has deep ties to Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay area. When Pinellas looked for people to serve on the Toytown selection committee, it had to draw members from Orlando and Sarasota because so many local people involved in real estate have ties to Sembler and, thus, potential conflicts, Meidel said.

The IRG-Bear Creek Capital team is proposing a massive development that could rack up construction costs of more than $1 billion, according to company projections. An estimated $200 million of that cost would be needed to develop a plan to build on a landfill site.

Greg Scheper, director of acquisitions and government affairs at Bear Creek Capital, said landfills are challenging because soil underneath can settle over time and become unstable. Another challenge: containing methane gas from the landfill, he said.

The developers are planning a mixed-use project called The Parks of Pinellas. It would have 1.5 million square feet of retail stores in the front of the complex, which would be along Roosevelt Boulevard. It would have another 1.5 million square feet of office space as well as apartments or condominiums, and recreational land such as ball fields and playgrounds.

"We just felt that there's a tremendous opportunity, despite that fact that there's an enormously challenging site" environmentally, Scheper said.

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