Pinellas County now offers grants for industrial development

Share
Pinellas County Economic Development's new Employment Sites program. By: Josh Holton (4/5/24)

Pinellas County is mostly built out. But new construction could expand by renewing older sites. The Urban Land Institute held its Florida Summit last weekend to explore what communities are doing to attract new businesses and industries to the area. Developers from around the country shared their best practices for walkable and mixed-use communities at the Florida Summit, while praising Florida efforts to design city centers like Water Street in Tampa. And now Pinellas County seeks to mobilize resources to make that region a hub to employ workers in the industrial sector. Teresa Brydon is the redevelopment manager with Pinellas County Economic Development. She manages the employment sites program

“Which is a $92 million dollar program where we get to help developers and/or business entities grow and expand their footprints throughout Pinellas County.”

The program is funded by Penny for Pinellas, a sales tax increase approved by voters in 2017 intended to help fund local infrastructure, with a third of those dollars collected coming from tourists and seasonal visitors. She said there should be some major projects completed over the next decade to put that $92 million back into capital improvement projects.

“We’ve got five different rounds of funding where we’ve committed somewhere in the neighborhood of about $27 million dollars to over 20 projects throughout the county primarily focused on industrial, industrial flex, Class A office, and then headquarter operations where people are doing expansions.”

Brydon said several old sites built out in the 1970s and 1980s are in need of renewal to make them more enticing for businesses. She said the program will use grants to offset funding gaps in new office or industrial developments. You can learn more about the initiative at pced.org/esp

 

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

student meal
Next school year Hillsborough public schools are offering free meals

Hillsborough Public Schools are offering students free meals for the...

Correspondence Through Poetry. A Mind-Numbing Week.

Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems by Herbert Gold...

The sound of change: Music’s influence on anti-war and human rights movements

Throughout history, music has served as a powerful catalyst for...

a man in a tye dye shirt talking on a radio microphone
Recreational pot for Florida is on the ballot this fall—let’s talk about it

In four months, Florida voters have the opportunity to vote...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Follow us on Instagram

Step Outside
Player position: