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Hotel planned for former restaurant site on Park Blvd.
By BOB McCLURE
| Article published on Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007 |
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SEMINOLE – If all goes as hoped, a new 125-room hotel and 70,000 square feet of commercial office space will open in 2009 on the site of the former Jesse’s Landing restaurant at 10400 Park Blvd.
Bethesda Developers LLC of Bethesda, Md., a real estate investment and development company that specializes in the restoration of historic buildings and non-historic hotel properties, has submitted an amendment to the city’s Future Land Use Map and asked for a zoning change that would allow the project on an 8.1-acre tract to move forward.
Bethesda Developers has applied for a change in the FLUM from residential low medium to commercial general and preservation and a zoning change from residential planned development-10 to commercial general and preservation.
The switches to commercial general would involve 6.64 acres of the site and the change to preservation would involve less than a half-acre along Long Bayou on the east side of the site.
City and Seminole Chamber of Commerce officials have worked many years trying to bring a hotel to Seminole but have never been successful.
“We’ve been working on this since the 1970s,” said Seminole Mayor Jimmy Johnson who is also executive director of the Seminole Chamber of Commerce. “We never could get an answer why we weren’t selected but now we’re finally beginning to get some positive contacts.”
In addition to the Park Boulevard site, Johnson has been pushing possible hotel locations on Seminole Boulevard just north of Park Boulevard, a site on Bay Pines Boulevard and the former site of Kash n’ Karry grocery store on Park Boulevard west of Seminole Boulevard.
“I think if we get one (hotel) started, others will follow,” said Johnson. “That’s what happened in Oldsmar. Now they have four or five.”
Johnson said he isn’t sure what hotel chain Bethesda Partners is targeting but indicated Holiday Inn Select, Marriott and Hampton Inn were the most likely.
The proposed FLUM and zoning changes have been approved by the city’s Development Review Board and will go to the City Council for approval early next year, probably in February. From that point, the proposed changes must be approved by the Pinellas Planning Council and the County Commission acting as the Countywide Planning Authority. From there, the proposal would come back to the City Council for approval on a developmental agreement.
Jesse’s Landing, a popular restaurant in a large Victorian-style building, opened in 1986 and closed 12 years later. The building was razed in late 2000 and in 2003 the city revised the zoning to allow for the construction of townhomes, which never materialized.
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Article published on Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007
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