- September 19, 2024
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As apartment buildings around the region continue to sprout out of the ground at what seems to be a record a pace, one building in downtown Tampa looks to set itself up as something different.
The property is AER. It sits on the city’s Riverwalk and on the doorstep of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, connected through a walkway to the Tampa Museum of Art.
Like many of the new apartment towers, this one has a host of amenities that cater to those who will pay for high-end living. But AER’s aim is to capitalize on the city’s often overlooked artistic side.
“I think what we're trying to accomplish, recognizing that we are serving a key role, is connecting and really creating what's now known as the arts district,” says Zvi Gordon, CEO of Gazit Horizons. Gazit is the owner of the 31-story AER tower, which opened last month. (AER, which was developed by American Land Ventures in a joint venture with Gazit, stands for Arts and Entertainment Residences.)
The 334-unit tower is at 300 W. Tyler St., with the Hillsborough River to the west and the Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative’s downtown branch to the east.
A 514-space parking garage, which connects to another garage and the arts museum, is on the south side. The Straz Center, whose entrance is just to the right when you step out of AER’s two-story lobby, is on the north side.
The ground floor of the building will include 13,688 square feet of retail space.
The tower, which sits on a 1.014-acre parcel, is going up where West Tyler once reached an apex, meeting up with other city streets. The city was able to take down an unused portion of the library and move the road in order to create both a better traffic flow and a block of land that was unused.
The idea to create the space to build on came from former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn when he was in office. Buckhorn, who took a victory lap during AER’s 2022 groundbreaking, had tried years earlier to sell the idea of moving a few blocks around and taking the back half of the library to create a usable block to fit the building.
But Buckhorn was met with resistance.
That sentiment has changed over the years, though, as Tampa has begun an urban residential transformation unimagined by most anyone familiar with the city 20 years ago.
Gordon calls the building “the hole in the donut” because of its position near the city’s performing arts center, art museum, the Glazer Children’s Museum and, across the river, from the University of Tampa.
By being a part of this cultural hub, Gordon and his team believe the building will attract a specific clientele that wants to embrace that piece of city living while also having access to the Riverwalk, Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park and the Armature Works food hall just about a mile’s walk away.
To fully embrace the culture, Gordon says the goal is to bring the work of local artists into the building to create a space to showcase what’s being created here.
While it is not alone among a new breed of buildings that’s come or coming to the city’s downtown in the past few years, AER is different in that as a rental property it embraces a type of high-rise living popular in bigger cities.
Gordon says the among the target demographics is the affluent professionals who are new to the city, as well as older people who want to move out of their homes to be in a more vibrant part of town.
These are “people who want to live in the urban market and have that urban experience you might have in a city like New York or downtown Boston,” he says. “But (they) want to do it in Tampa, with great weather and not necessarily go out to suburbia where life is a little more quiet.”
One of those residents is Gary Bellino who moved back to Tampa after a year in downtown Sarasota to be in the AER building.
A Realtor in the region, Bellino has known the building’s management team for years and followed the progress during construction. “What really drew me back here is predominantly the building because of the level of lifestyle and whatnot.”
He cites the proximity to the interstate and other neighborhoods, as well as the extras that come with the property.
And those extras are important to draw residents in because, while a lot of the talk is about what’s around the building, what’s inside is impressive as well.
For starters, the 31st story deck with a high-end wellness spa and private-club like sitting area — complete with a demonstration kitchen — offers city views that are likely unmatched by any rental property in Tampa.
Standing on the deck you can see down the river, through downtown to the port, to the bay and across to downtown St. Petersburg. On a clear day you can see for miles and, one can imagine, watch afternoon thunderstorms rolling slowly toward the city or the sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico 25 miles to the west.
Other amenities include a pool and cabana deck, a workspace that includes private offices and a conference rooms as well as podcast and creation studios.
As for the wellness spa on the top floor, it’s equipped with a dry sauna, cold plunge pools and an infrared yoga studio.
“We realize that people want to live in urban environments that are safe, that are clean, that have good public connectivity. What we call live, work, play markets,” says Gordon.
“It's not enough to have the live and the work, right? You can have residences and office buildings. That's not enough, particularly in a world where people spend less time in the office. The last part is play. And play is restaurants and entertainment venues. But a major part of that is the cultural attractions in a city.”
