Politics
Ken Welch delays historic Gas Plant district redevelopment timeline into 2026
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch is extending the city’s timeline for competing proposals to redevelop the Historic Gas Plant District, pushing back the publication of a 30-day public notice until early January in response to concerns from City Council members and the development community.
Welch said in a letter to Council members Tuesday that he will direct city staff to delay publication of the notice until Jan. 4, giving developers until Feb. 3 to submit proposals. The move effectively provides a 105-day window since the city first announced its intent to reopen the process in late October.
The announcement comes ahead of Thursday’s City Council meeting, when members are set to debate a resolution from Council member Richie Floyd calling for a new request for proposals (RFP) and a longer submission period of at least 90 days. Welch said he does not believe a new RFP is necessary, citing the city’s existing 23 guiding principles established in 2022 and reaffirmed through public input sessions.
“Our priorities—jobs, housing, equitable economic development, resilience, green space, and recognition of the Historic Gas Plant District community — have not changed,” Welch said in the statement. “By moving forward as outlined, we will maintain consistent priorities and expectations and make long-overdue progress with clarity and purpose.”
Welch’s administration announced last month that it would open a 30-day window to allow competing or alternative proposals for the site, following the receipt of an unsolicited offer from developer Casey Ellison and investor Cathie Wood and their partners. Their $6.8 billion proposal calls for 3,701 new homes, including affordable, workforce, and senior units, as well as more than 1,500 hotel rooms, public parks and cultural spaces, and a $120 million city investment in infrastructure.
A separate unsolicited proposal from the Pinellas County Housing Authority seeks to redevelop a city-owned parking lot within the Gas Plant area into an 80-unit affordable senior housing complex.
Welch said the city remains committed to beginning redevelopment with parcels designated for senior housing and the future Woodson African American Museum of Florida. He emphasized that while the 2022 RFP initially included plans for a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays, that component is no longer part of the city’s redevelopment strategy.
“Our unified work to include the Tampa Bay Rays in the long-term vision and their subsequent abdication have provided more clarity for the future of our city and the property,” Welch said.
The city selected a $6.5 billion redevelopment plan from the Rays and Hines Development in 2022 after a 90-day RFP process, but the deal collapsed earlier this year after Hurricane Milton damaged Tropicana Field. The team has since been sold to Jacksonville homebuilder Patrick Zalupski and a group of investors who have signaled interest in pursuing a long-term stadium solution in the Tampa Bay area, though not necessarily in St. Pete.
City Council is expected to discuss Floyd’s resolution at its meeting Thursday.
Mills was a day-one Byron Donalds backer in the gubernatorial race.
A former House Speaker and current candidate for Governor is leading the charge for Republicans as scandal swirls around a Congressman.
Saying the “evidence is mounting” against Rep. Cory Mills, Paul Renner says other candidates for Governor should “stand up and be counted” and join him in the call for Mills to leave Congress.
Renner made the call earlier this week.
But on Friday, the Palm Coast Republican doubled down.
He spotlighted fresh reporting from Roger Sollenberger alleging that Mills’ company “appears to have illegally exported weapons while he serves in Congress, including to Ukraine,” that Mills failed to disclose conflicts of interest, “tried to fistfight other Republican members of Congress, and lied about his party stature to bully other GOP candidates out of primaries that an alleged romantic interest was running in,” and lied about his conversion to Islam.
The House Ethics Committee is already probing Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, over allegations of profiting from federal defense contracts while in Congress. More recently, the Committee expanded its work to review allegations that he assaulted one ex-girlfriend and threatened to share intimate photos of another.
Other candidates have been more reticent in addressing the issue, including Rep. Byron Donalds.
“When any other members have been involved and stuff like this, my advice is the same,” said Donalds, a Naples Republican. “They need to actually spend a lot more time in the district and take stock of what’s going on at home, and make that decision with their voters.”
The response came less than a year after Mills, a New Smyrna Beach Republican, spoke at the launch of Donalds’ gubernatorial campaign.
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Staff writer Jacob Ogles contributed reporting.
The cold war between Florida’s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no signs of thawing.
On Friday, Sen. Rick Scott weighed in on Florida Politics’ reporting on the Agency for Health Care Administration’s apparent repayment of $10 million of Medicaid money from a settlement last year, which allegedly had been diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation, summarily filtered through non-profits through political committees, and spent on political purposes.
“I appreciate the efforts by the Florida legislature to hold Hope Florida accountable. Millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads. If any money was misspent, then it should be paid back by the entities responsible, not the taxpayers,” Scott posted to X.
While AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus says that is an “incorrect” interpretation, she did not respond to a follow-up question asking for further detail this week.
The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor Centene, which DeSantis said was “a cherry on top” in the settlement, arguing it wasn’t truly from Medicaid money.
But in terms of the Scott-DeSantis contretemps, it’s the latest example of tensions that seemed to start even before DeSantis was sworn in when Scott left the inauguration of his successor, and which continue in the race to succeed DeSantis, with Scott enthusiastic about current front runner Byron Donalds.
Earlier this year, Scott criticized DeSantis’ call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.
While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott critiqued the Heartbeat Protection Act, a law signed by DeSantis that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15 week ban was “where the state’s at.”
In 2023 after Scott endorsed Donald Trump for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to “short circuit” the voters.
That same year amid DeSantis’ conflict over parental rights legislation with The Walt Disney Co., Scott said it was important for Governors to “work with” major companies in their states.
The critiques went both ways.
When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott amid controversy about the Senator’s blind trust for his assets as Governor.
“I basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,” DeSantis said in October 2018. “I’m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I’m not going to be entering office with those issues.”
In 2020, when the state’s creaky unemployment website couldn’t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis likened it to a “jalopy in the Daytona 500” and Scott urged him to “quit blaming others” for the website his administration inherited.
The chill between the former and current Governors didn’t abate in time for 2022’s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis didn’t talk to him after the fearsome Hurricane Ian ravaged the state.
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