Milhaus plans trio of projects

Milhaus, an Indianapolis-based developer that specializes in urban, mixed-use projects, is planning a trio of Gulf Coast apartments in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Bonita Springs.

In Tampa's Seminole Heights neighborhood, the company's $20 million project is slated to contain 84 rental apartments and 8,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, says Milhaus CEO Tadd Miller.

In St. Petersburg's Edge district, the company is assembling a tract of land at 1600 Central Ave. for a $25 million project with 130 residences and 10,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

But the company's Bonita Springs project will be its most ambitious along the Gulf Coast, to date. There, Milhaus plans a roughly $60 million complex on 30 acres along Tamiami Trail, containing 284 units in a series of three-story buildings.

Milhaus intends to start work there and in Seminole Heights this summer, and break ground in St. Petersburg in October.

“Combined with all the growth there, we're finding that there just aren't a lot of developers who are willing to go into transitional neighborhoods in those areas, so we felt it was a good niche for us,” Miller says. “We're looking to do smaller, more specialized projects.”

Milhaus hopes to complete its Tampa and St. Petersburg projects in mid-2018, and begin moving residents into its Bonita Springs complex around the same time, wrapping up there in mid-2019.

The three projects will help the 7-year-old Milhaus achieve its goal of having a portfolio valued at $4 billion comprising 20,000 units in 10 markets by 2020.Milhaus has apartment projects in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, among other cities.

Miller says he's also not worried about the glut of new rentals that have either come online or are slated to come online in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

“There's a lot of volume of new product, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of new cutting-edge stuff out there,” Miller says. “That's where we hope to play.”

He adds that Milhaus plans to own the complexes it builds “long term.”

“We're not just building something to flip it, which isn't too common in our business anymore.”