Assignment: St. Petersburg » New and Exciting!

The Sun Is Up, The Sky Is Blue…

Bob Horn — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:21:34 +0000

After so many days of gray skies and rain, it was absolutely glorious to wake up yesterday morning to blue skies and sunshine, the way things are supposed to be, here in St. Petersburg! I was close to downtown on business, so I drove by the Chihuly Collection location on Beach Drive, just to see how things are coming along. This brand new venue is scheduled to open this weekend at 400 Beach Drive. It definitely appeared as though all the finishing touches were being applied, including workers welding a protective frame around the base of this very cool looking Chihuly exhibit that will live in front of the new venue.

The Chihuly Collection is presented by the Morean Arts Center. For full details on the Chihuly Collection, as well as information on the many special opening events scheduled for this weekend, check out this link.

[For a larger, full-size view of the photo, please click on the picture.]

Updated Look at the New Dali

Bob Horn — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:37:57 +0000

I usually prefer not to repeat myself, but in this case, I’m going to make an exception. Yes, I’ve done posts in the past about the amazing new
Dali museum (click on this link if you’d like to check any of them out). But it keeps getting more and more amazing looking, and I just couldn’t stop myself this morning. My wife and I had taken a nice, long walk downtown (because, even though it was hot out, it seemed much more fun that going to the gym and fighting the treadmill) and when we finished, we decided to drive to The Hangar for breakfast. On the way, I saw the current state of The Dali and just had to stop for this shot.

According to their website, the new museum will open in 211 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes, and 34 seconds. I, for one, am very excited about it!

[for a larger, high resolution photo, click on the picture below]

Crislip After Dark

Bob Horn — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:16:31 +0000

I first posted on the Crislip Arcade back in August of last year. It’s worth a quick look at that post, so that you can compare the entryway to the arcade at that time to the new entryway. It used to have a very boring and stark opening at the bottom, and some old windows higher up. But now, with the renovation of the 600 block of Central Avenue and all of the new artist/tenants moving in, the arcade itself received a much-needed and very well-done facelift. As I drove by one evening last week, I saw the lights on and the new gates closed, and I had to stop to take a photo. It’s even more beautiful in person, though, so you should stop by when you have a chance. For information on some of the businesses and activities in the 600 block, check out their website. [please click on the picture for a full-sized image...]

Cassis – Another New Beach Drive Destination

Bob Horn — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:56:57 +0000

Cassis American Brasserie has taken over the empty space on the Beach Drive side of the Ovation Condominium building, promising an ‘affordable French-American brasserie menu’. The restaurant began limited operations last weekend in an invitation-only setting, allowing the chefs and servers to get comfortable without being overwhelmed. It was due to open to the public for dinner seatings on Monday, with plans to add a weekend brunch next, and then, eventually, weekday breakfasts and lunches.

I have not tried Cassis yet, but I promise that I will, and soon – it looks beautiful inside, and I love the arrangements for outside seating – these high-tech swing-out umbrellas each have a built-in light, so that you’re not eating in the dark at night! And the bar inside the restaurant looks just amazing from my window view. As soon as I have a chance to eat here, I’ll post again with more details any my very objective opinion of the place. But I was in the neighborhood one early morning a few days ago and had a chance to get this photo and wanted to mention Cassis right away – I love the fact that we have new restaurants opening downtown, and I’m happy to spread the word! (Please click on the photo for a larger image)

Designer Show House at Ovation

Bob Horn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:44:26 +0000

Each year, the Florida Orchestra, working with local designers and developers, hosts a Designer Show House as a fundraiser for the orchestra. Typically, the venue is a house, but this year, it’s at the gorgeous new Ovation condominiums in downtown St. Petersburg. There are two condos featured, each decorated by several different local companies and interior designers.

It’s always a pleasure to see the furniture, art, wall treatments and other accessories that are presented in these showhouses. And with this year’s location at Ovation, there’s the added pleasure of the incredible views of Tampa Bay and downtown. The Showhouse will be open this year from March 6th through April 4th. For hours and additional information, check the Florida Orchestra’s page about the house on their website. It’s fun to see these condos and the design work, and the ticket price goes to support our great orchestra. And, for a bonus while you’re there, JMC, Ovation’s developer, has hired folks to keep their two model condos open whenever the showhouse is open. So you actually get to check out four separate condos for the price of your ticket! Can’t beat that deal! Also, be sure to walk out to the east of Ovation and check out the “O Wave” public art sculpture. It’s a beautiful piece of art that was commissioned by JMC specifically for this property, and its design reflects the spirit and feel of the building. For a look at some High Dynamic Range photos that I took of the O Wave sculpture last year, check out my post on it.

Oh, if, by chance, you fall in love with Ovation while you’re there, please be sure to give me a call. I’ll be happy to work with you to negotiate the best deal for you! It’s always a smart move to have a Buyer’s Agent working with you if you’re interested in buying ANY new condominium. There is a misconception that, in a new condominium development, you have to work with the sales staff on site. That is not the case. Although they are nice people and will certainly be happy to help you, they work for the condo developer, not for you. Call your own Realtor (or me, if you don’t have an existing relationship with a Realtor) and be sure that you have someone looking out for your interests!

St. Petersburg’s Fresh Market

Bob Horn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:35:30 +0000

Fresh Market Coming to Cocoanut Grove Site (click on photo for larger image)

For a good many years, the corner of Fourth Street North and 30th Avenue was the home of the Cocoanut Grove Motel, a grouping of cottages that hummed with activity every winter, as the tourists flocked back down to St. Petersburg to escape the cold north. But by the 1980’s, the old cottages were getting pretty ramshackle and the motel’s days were numbered. In February of 1987, bulldozers rolled in and razed the old place, followed soon by the construction of a brand new shopping plaza, one that retained the Cocoanut Grove name.

For a long time, the new center stayed busy, but a few years back, the place seemed to go downhill and tenants began closing down or moving to other locations. The very last active business in the center was the Athenian Garden Greek Restaurant, and they moved out several months ago to find a new home downtown, at 21 3rd Street North.

I’ve been wondering about Cocoanut Grove each time I drive by, because it’s on a good sized piece of land and it’s in a very good location, one where the right kind of business should be able to thrive. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the new sign spring up in front of the place. Fresh Market.

For those who don’t know Fresh Market, the nearest one is in Clearwater, at 25961 US Highway 19. They’ve been there since 1998, and everyone I know who has ever entered the place has become a devoted fan. Fresh Markets specialize in high quality perishable products, presented in an environment that feels good and by people who seem glad to be working there.

Just to be clear, I’m not getting any kickbacks from Fresh Market! But I want you to have a little feel for what’s coming: Their produce departments have over 400 items, including a large selection of organic produce. Their bakeries sell 30 freshly baked breads each day and 15 varieties of freshly baked pies each day. Their delis have more than 200 varieties of cheeses. They have a full service meat counter with butchers on site. They sell ’signature’ sandwiches, and you can call or fax ahead to have them ready for pickup.

In addition to all of that, there are all sorts of specialty items that are hard to find in other stores. My wife’s brother lives in San Francisco, and he got us practically addicted to Peet’s coffee, a local brand out there. No chance of finding it here – we either had to wait for her brother to visit or we had to order online. And then we walked into Clearwater’s Fresh Market, and there was Peet’s! Similar scenarios abound through the store.

St. Petersburg’s Fresh Market is scheduled to open in late Summer of 2010. I’ll keep an eye on progress and will update in a few months. Meanwhile, my mouth is watering…

Old Cocoanut Grove Shopping Plaza

The New All Children’s Hospital

Bob Horn — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:47:16 +0000

All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg has been an outstanding, state of the art children’s health care facility for many years. Originally founded at the American Legion Hospital for Crippled Children in 1927, the hospital began a transformation to a full-service health care facility for kids in the early 1960’s. In 1967, the All Children’s Hospital that has been named one of the top 25 children’s hospitals in North America by Child Magazine for four years in a row, opened its doors for the first time.

Today, All Children’s is the only specialty licensed children’s hospital on Florida’s West Coast. St. Petersburg residents are extremely lucky to have such a facility in our city, and apparently they know it, because many very generous donors have made it possible to build a brand new, larger, better All Children’s, and it is scheduled to open in December of this year.

To make their stays less traumatic and as pleasant as possible, the New All Children’s will have individual rooms for kids, with space for parents to sleep over. There’s a rooftop playground planned, and a very cool feature called the EyeClick Interactivity System. It uses ceiling-mounted cameras and infrared light sources to give visitors an immersive experience that responds to their movements and changes on the floor. There’s also a movie theater, video bingo, and plays and other activities in the works.

In terms of care, the list of features is even more impressive. The new hospital is a ten story facility with 259 beds. Included is a 97 bed neonatal intensive care unit, twelve state of the art operating suites, a cardiovascular intensive care unit, a pediatric cancer and blood disorders center, and a pediatric emergency room. On the west side of the building, with a separate entrance, there will be Bayfront Baby Place, a separate Obstetrics Care Unit combined with a Well-Baby nursery. There’s much more to the new hospital, and when it does open its doors, I’ll get some more photos and will do another post. But for now, we can all just feel good, knowing that we have such an excellent new facility about to open here.

New All Children's Hospital (click on picture for larger image)

Bayfront Baby Place (click on picture for larger image)

O Wave in Downtown St. Petersburg

Bob Horn — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:19:56 +0000

I love public art! I can be out in the world, just moving along through life, and I might be anywhere at all, and suddenly I come upon something that was placed there, just for me to look at, to study, to question, to enjoy, or maybe to laugh at. Okay, maybe it wasn’t placed there just for me. You can look at it, too. But the point is that it’s there for all to see and to take in, if you like, or to ignore if you so choose.

St. Petersburg has a LOT of public art installations scattered around the city and I still discover new ones every now and then. This post is about a new public art installation that I saw for the first time last weekend. I realize that this is a subjective opinion, but it’s my blog so I get to post my opinion: The sculpture is absolutely stunning!

This sculpture is called “O Wave”. Not “O-Wave”, as I’ve seen in some places, but just “O Wave”. It was created by artist/sculptor Gordon Huether, and it was commissioned by JMC Communities, the developers of the new luxury condominium, Ovation, in downtown St. Petersburg. The sculpture is a sixteen foot tall curving arc made of stainless steel and dichroic glass. The glass reflects and refracts and generally plays with the light, and it changes according to the angle that you view it from.

The artist, in a recent statement about the new sculpture, said, “With curves that evoke nearby waters and Ovation’s own undulating lines, glass that simultaneously transmits and reflects light, and reflective surfaces that capture ambient activity of nearby trees, sky and passersby, the fixed sculpture takes on a distinct animated character, creating a passively kinetic sculpture.”

I am posting two photos, just to give a little feel of the different look that it takes on. Please click on the photos to bring up a full-size version for a better look. But for the best look, head downtown and see this beautiful work for yourself! You’ll find it on Beach Drive, at the corner of Second Avenue North.

O Wave (click on photo for larger image)

Another View (click on picture for larger image)

Well Hello, Dali!

Bob Horn — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:22:04 +0000

If you’ve never paid a visit to the Dali Museum, you really should! It’s a fantastic land of the surreal, and walking through the museum and really taking time to absorb what you see there can create entirely new neural pathways in your brain! Dali’s works are amazing, over the top explosions of color and shape and reality gone wild, and they are nothing but fun to see. Fans who live in the area or who visit here are very lucky – the St. Petersburg Dali museum holds the largest collection of Dali works in the United States and the largest collection outside of Europe.

For anyone who does not know Salvador Dali’s works, you can get a pretty good idea of what they’re about by checking out this Google Images site. And for those that do know Dali’s work, but are not familiar with all of the great things about the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, you should check out the Museum’s web site. It’s worth looking at – aside from information about the exhibitions at the Museum, you can also learn about special events like the Saturday Family Fun Day and the S’Real Friday Happy Hour, with live music and half price admissions after 5:30 PM. Think about it – go to Happy Hour, have a couple of drinks, then walk around and take a look at some of the most mind-bending depictions of non-reality imaginable. Guaranteed to make your Happy Hour even happier. And, while you’re at it, you might make a new connection with someone else who’s attending – it’s a popular Friday evening event!

The Salvador Dali Museum is located at 1000 3rd Street South, just to the south of the University of South Florida’s Bayboro campus. For now.

And that leads us to the photograph below, and the really exciting news that I’m posting about. The Dali Museum will be moving, probably in 2011, if all goes according to plan. The new Dali home will be a 35 million dollar, 66,450 square foot structure – that’s twice the size of the existing museum! Included in the layout will be 50% more gallery space than the current museum has, which means that there will be a lot more of Dali’s work on display at any given time. The museum will feature a huge, futuristic looking glass geodesic structure, giving it a unique look and feel that should provide incredible visual impact in its setting on the waterfront and adjacent to the Mahaffey Theater.

As the building progresses, I’ll update this blog with new photos and more details. In the meantime, give yourself a treat and plan to spend some time at the existing Museum. I’m sure you’ll be glad you did…

New Dali Museum (Click for larger image)

What’s Going On There?

Bob Horn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:08:22 +0000

Celotex-Pridgen Site - Click for Larger Photo

If you’re anything at all like me (and, for your sake, I really hope you’re not, but that’s another story altogether), it drives you crazy to see something big going on and not know what it’s all about! That’s been the story with me for months as I drive on Dr. ML King Street North, in the neighborhood of 102nd Avenue – right next to the Gateway Crossings Shopping Center where the Publix and the Hooters are located. There is a huge piece of land there – 21.5 acres – that used to be home to Celotex, a building material manufacturing and testing subsidiary of Jim Walters. Several months ago, the bulldozers rolled in and razed all of the old buildings on the site. Now, they’ve graded some of the property and there are huge piles of dirt standing there, awaiting their destiny as a base for something to come. But what?

I couldn’t stand not knowing any more, so I started researching, and it was actually pretty interesting. I found documents dating back to 2004, minutes of City of St. Petersburg zoning meetings, discussing plans for this land. It’s going to be a really big deal!

Here’s what’s in the works: A multi-use development, not unlike the Carillon development that’s located just a little bit west of this site. Plans call for 150,000 square feet of office space, 350 apartments, 13,000 square feet of restaurants, 24,400 square feet of retail space, a 12,000 square foot pharmacy with a drive-through, and three parking structures. Estimated cost of the project is $75 million!

Celotex-Pridgen Development - Click for Larger Photo

On developer Grady Pridgen’s web site, there is an artist’s rendering of the development. I’ve included a snipping of it here, so that you can see what I saw. In doing my research on this development, I noticed that Mr. Pridgen has received Leeds awards for building and retro-fitting old buildings to be significantly more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Although I found no mention of whether such an approach will be taken with this new development, it seems not to be too big a leap of faith to imagine that he will apply such an approach. Over the coming months, as things progress with this new development, I’ll learn what I can about that topic and will post on it in the future. But for now, I’ll watch the porgress as I drive by from time to time, and I’ll feel a lot better, knowing what’s going on. If only I knew what stores and restaurants are going to occupy the space…