St. Pete wants to pick up the pace on zoning changes around SunRunner's BRT route
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 31, 2022

St. Petersburg is expediting plans to encourage development around the SunRunner, the county’s forthcoming bus rapid transit system.

St. Pete City Council, meeting as a committee of the whole last week, heard a presentation from city staff on transit-oriented development, also known as TOD, around the SunRunner route. At the committee’s request, staff focused on the immediate actions the city could take to finally solidify changes that have been in the works for years.

The committee unanimously approved a motion that directed staff to move forward with three items:

The countywide plan amendment to activity centers for the stations

A citywide comprehensive plan text amendment to update the TOD overlay to incorporate the SunRunner concepts and recommendations

A city map amendment to add the TOD overlay to those areas

Communities around the SunRunner may soon see a wave of growth if the city tweaks the local zoning requirements. The potential for growth in some areas has been a topic of discussion for business and civic leaders and real estate developers for years.

The council’s vote authorizes staff to prioritize drafting the amendments surrounding TOD. These decisions will run concurrently with the county plan.

Council chairwoman Gina Driscoll said St. Petersburg’s housing shortage is “calling us to support this” and added that they wanted to find ways to move forward together. Council vice-chair Brandi Gabbard echoed Driscoll’s call to action and said she didn’t want them to leave without action on TOD.

The conversation Thursday included a plan proposed by staff to have an overlay that would allow for unique development opportunities if they were proposed in city-defined geographic bubbles around station areas.

The station stops — categorized as downtown, urban, village and neighborhood — would support different sizes of development bubbles based on which category is assigned to that area. The plans showed 22nd Street and 32nd Street stations as urban; 40th Street, 49th Street and 58th Street as neighborhood, and 66th Street as village.

For example, an urban station could support a half-mile of a zoning bubble, while a neighborhood station could support a quarter-mile. Within those areas, Urban Design and Historic Preservation Manager Derek Kilborn said they might tier the types of development allowed based on how far from the transit station the proposed projects are.

Staff used the station at 22nd Street South to highlight how this zoning overlay could impact development. It’s an industrial area, but with these changes, the city could look at expanding the mix of development uses in the district that would reflect the “changing business and market innovations” while still preserving its use and the corresponding employment.

Kilborn said much of the 22nd Street discussion on how to move forward with zoning revolves around how much residential growth the council and city are comfortable allowing in the area — which is predominately focused on industrial. The city is waiting for the county to make decisions about its map amendment so it can implement its own zoning changes.