Reach for the sky, and your wallet

A big-time marketing opportunity on the Gulf Coast is up for grabs for a bold-thinking — and deep-pocketed — business.

The opportunity is so way up, in fact, it revolves around landing naming rights on the tallest building in downtown St. Petersburg. The asking price for the rights, to get on top of the 386-foot, 28-story One Progress Plaza building, is certainly steep: $5 million for 10 years. Bank of America, which at one point leased more than 7,000 square feet in the building, pulled its name off the top last year.

Built in 1990, One Progress Plaza is in the heart of downtown St. Petersburg. Darin Kucera, managing partner of Kucera Properties, a family-run firm that owns the 300,000-square-foot building, says naming rights will allow a company to “instantly increase or create name recognition.”

From at least one perspective, moreover, $500,000 a year for the name on top of the St. Petersburg skyline is a bargain. Tropicana, for instance, pays roughly $1.5 million a year for the naming rights at Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Still, the asking price scared off at least a few potential naming rights clients. Bank of Tampa and Raymond James, for example, current One Progress Plaza tenants, negotiated with Kucera but failed to reach a deal. Regarding Bank of Tampa, Kucera tells Coffee Talk the sides “couldn't come to an agreement on the final economics.”

Kucera hired The Clear Agency, a St. Petersburg-based advertising firm, to help find a naming rights partner. The goal is to land a company with a local presence, but Jenn Greacen, executive director with the agency, says they will also market the opportunity outside the region.

The naming rights prospect marks the second time this year a tall Gulf Coast building seeks a replacement name for Bank of America. The other one is on Main Street in downtown Sarasota, where BofA plans to leave its space in the Ellis Building, a Benderson Development property. The bank is building a new branch a few blocks away, while Benderson has been marketing the ground floor and naming rights since February.