D.C. investor pays $65.6M for apartment community near historic downtown

TARPON SPRINGS — An apartment complex near historic downtown Tarpon Springs and the city’s sponge docks has sold for $65.6 million to a Washington, D.C. investor with an existing Gulf Coast footprint.

The 236-unit community, Icaria on Pinellas, sits on 6.5 acres along the Pinellas Trail. The buyer was Washington, D.C.-based RSE Capital Partners, according to a statement. 

RSE recently bought the Lotus at Starkey Ranch apartments in Pasco County for $87 million. And, about two years ago, it and a partner bought the 21-story, 340-unit Icon Harbour Island luxury residential tower in Tampa for $131.5 million.

With Icaria on Pinellas, RSE now owns more than a dozen Gulf Coast complexes.

The complex is located at 1185 South Pinellas Ave., just off Alternate 19. It is about a mile from downtown and about three miles from the sponge docks. A sculpture by artist Cecilia Lueza sits at the entrance to the community.

The property has direct access to the Pinellas Trail, a cycling and pedestrian trail that runs from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs.

DDA Development, which worked with Backstreets Capital and Atlantic American Partners, developed the property and in a statement calls it the “largest development of this kind in Tarpon Springs.”

 “We opened Icaria during the middle of the pandemic and still were able to lease it up fully in just six months,” Bowen Arnold, DDA Development’s principal, says in the statement. “That reflects the pent-up demand in this part of Pinellas county.”