"When you say Oldsmar, people are like, 'Well, where's that?'"
That's Chad Scerbo, a longtime Oldsmar resident who walks his dog Mocha across the eight acres next to City Hall most days. He told a Spectrum News reporter in early August that the city needs something to put it on the map, standing on land Oldsmar has owned, mowed, and paid taxes on for more than two decades without building anything on it. His frustration isn't new. What's new is that the city just signed off on terms specific enough that the field might not stay empty much longer.
If you live in Oldsmar, you've probably heard some version of "they're finally doing something with that lot." What most people haven't seen is what the city actually agreed to, and the terms are stranger and more restrictive than a typical apartment-and-retail deal. The apartments, it turns out, are the least interesting part of this.
A Field Nobody Could Agree On
The eight acres sit bounded by Tampa Road, State Street, and Washington Avenue, and Oldsmar has owned them for more than two decades, most of that time as open grass the city mowed and paid taxes on rather than developed. Oldsmar tried once with a developer called Woodfield Development, and the city council eventually pulled the plug on those negotiations and started over. A follow-up request for proposals came back with zero responses.
The current push started in earnest with a community visioning workshop in July 2022, where roughly 125 residents showed up to help shape a mission statement for the site. Two years later, the city had proposals from two developers: Miami-based Office America Group and Ohio-based Stanbery Development Group. The council scored them on a weighted matrix and Stanbery came out ahead, 40.23 to 34.6. In August 2024, the council voted 3-2 to begin negotiating with Stanbery, a split vote that reflected real disagreement over how dense the project should be.
That disagreement didn't disappear once negotiations started. Stanbery brought a concept plan to the council in September 2025 that the council rejected outright. A revised version came back in November 2025 and passed 4-1. A second revision in May 2026 finally got a unanimous yes. By June 16, 2026, the council had unanimously approved 31 essential terms for a formal development agreement, and by early August the city attorney was drafting that agreement for the planning board to review.
Why This Isn't Just "240 More Apartments"
The headline number everyone repeats is 240 apartment units. That number is real, but it's not the part of the deal that should change how you think about this project.
Buried in the essential terms is a phasing requirement: Stanbery cannot let anyone move into the apartments until the commercial buildings and the public plaza are fully built out. That single clause is what separates this from a lot of mixed-use projects that open the residential tower years before the ground-floor retail ever fills in. Here, the developer's ability to start collecting rent checks is tied directly to finishing the part of the project residents actually asked for.
The financial terms reinforce it. Stanbery is paying $2 million for the eight acres and covering its own impact fees and utility relocation costs. Every apartment has to rent at market rate, which makes the project ineligible for local tax incentives. And the city built in a real penalty for stalling: if the project isn't finished within five years of the agreement being signed, Stanbery owes the city more than $29,000 a month, roughly what Oldsmar calculates it would have collected in property taxes had the project been done on schedule.
None of that guarantees the retail will be good. It does mean the contract removes the easiest way to cut corners.
The Fine Print That Will Shape What You Actually See There
The terms also read like a list written by people who've watched other Tampa Bay redevelopments go sideways. Several categories of business are flatly prohibited on the site:
- Medical uses, including hospitals, emergency rooms, urgent care centers, and primary care offices
- Adult businesses
- Theaters
- Houses of worship
- Banquet halls
- Massage parlors
- Check-cashing stores
- Flea markets
- Pawn shops
- Pool halls
At least 30 percent of the initial commercial tenants have to be food businesses. Outdoor live entertainment has to stop by 10 p.m., and background music has to end by 11. The developer is required to install a public art sculpture worth at least $50,000. And the plaza itself isn't purely private space: the agreement carves out up to 10 days a year for city events, including the kind of holiday tree lighting Oldsmar already hosts nearby.
Whether you find that list reassuring or overly cautious probably depends on how you feel about downtown Dunedin or Safety Harbor's Main Street. Either way, it tells you more about what daily life around this corner will feel like than the apartment count does.
The Same Corridor Is Already Changing While You Wait
None of this is happening in a vacuum. A few blocks away on Tampa Road, the restaurant scene has been filling in on its own timeline, independent of the City Hall site.
Craft Street Kitchen has been serving its gastropub menu and rotating beer list on Curlew Road for just over a decade now, the second location for a concept that started in Trinity. Sparta Seafood and Grill sits nearby on the same stretch. A new Asian buffet, Grand Harvest, opened on Tampa Road earlier this year, and La Placita Modern Mexican Cuisine has been finishing out the old Applebee's space at 4016 Tampa Road after a longer-than-expected buildout.
There's also a separate zoning change the council approved the same night as the City Hall terms, this one for a 3.5-acre parcel on Stephanie Drive. That site had been capped at two tenants under a decades-old restrictive covenant. The new ordinance allows a larger multitenant plaza anchored by United Coffee Club, a local business currently on Douglas Road that plans to relocate, sell specialty coffee equipment, and lease out its remaining space. And near the public library, a separate 82-unit townhome project with live/work units has been working through its own approval process for years, a reminder that the City Hall site is one piece of a broader pattern of infill happening around downtown, not the only thing changing.
What Happens Next, and What Still Isn't Guaranteed
The city held three open houses this July, at Gull Aire Village Clubhouse, the Cypress Forest Recreation Center, and the State Street Center, to let residents react to the terms before the contract was finalized. The city attorney is now drafting the formal development agreement, which still has to clear the planning board at a public meeting before anything is signed. Once it is signed, the five-year construction clock starts.
It's worth remembering that this exact site has died before under a different developer's name. Nothing here guarantees a ribbon cutting. But the terms approved this summer are more specific, and more financially binding on the developer, than anything Oldsmar has put on paper for this corner before.
If you already live in Oldsmar, this is one to watch not because it changes anything about buying or selling, but because it will change what's a five-minute walk from your front door. If you're curious how projects like this tend to affect property values in a specific pocket of Pinellas County, that's a conversation Ali Schaaff has with Oldsmar homeowners regularly. Reach out anytime, or start with a free home valuation to see where your property stands today.
