Businessman Cory Petcoff walked away happy Thursday from a meeting where he was seeking incentives to transform a historic downtown bank building his company owns into a high-end restaurant that he said would be comparable to The Capital Grille in Tampa.
He originally asked the Lakeland Community Redevelopment Agency for $195,000 to make structural improvements to the 78-year-old Florida National Bank building at 113 S. Tennessee Ave.
But Petcoff told the CRA board Thursday that new construction estimates he received earlier in the day make the project eligible for $300,000 in incentives. He also said that due to the higher building costs, the restaurateur he is negotiating with might back out if he wasn’t offered more than $195,000 in incentives.
Mixed feelings: Board members were torn. On the one hand, City Commissioner Guy LaLonde Jr. said, “The possibility for having something comparable to Capital Grille in Lakeland is long overdue.”
On the other hand, the $300,000 request — combined with a $30,000 incentive previously approved for another project — would nearly deplete the funds budgeted for incentives in downtown Lakeland for the just-begun fiscal year. (The $30,000 will help replace a large skylight at the My Office & More building at Main and Tennessee that Petcoff’s Baron Management LLC purchased earlier this year.)
LaLonde said he favored capping incentives for the project at $250,000 in case other worthy downtown projects emerge. The rest of the board agreed and approved incentives up to $250,000 to be paid once the project is successfully completed and its developers can document eligible construction costs.
Vacant building: Bill Freeman, who has been CEO of several upscale restaurant groups, heard from Lakeland contacts about the vacant bank building, which has an Art Deco exterior and an interior marked by marble walls and floors and an elegant high ceiling.
He contacted Petcoff in December about using the building for Prima 135, an Italian-style steakhouse whose name combines the Italian word for prime and the ideal temperature for a medium-rare steak.
Since it was built in 1946, the building has housed only banks: first Florida National, then First Union and more recently Wells Fargo, which ended its lease in February. Baron Management, a Petcoff company, bought the structure in 2014.
The cost for installing a sprinkler system alone — which was not needed when the building was a bank — will be a quarter million dollars, Petcoff said.
The incentives, he said, will help offset costs for some of the physical improvements needed for a restaurant: sprinklers, a gas line and grease traps.
Redevelopment: CRA Director Valerie Vaught said the two incentive programs that the project was approved for are aimed at the CRA’s primary goals for downtown: Convert unused first floors to retail and restaurant uses and activate unused second floors.
The Lakeland CRA was established to revitalize downtown, Midtown and Dixieland, using public dollars to stimulate private investment. The agency is funded largely by tax increment financing – a funding mechanism where future increases in property tax revenue are used to finance redevelopment efforts intended to expand the tax base.
The project: Petcoff, a former CRA Advisory Board chairman, discussed the proposed restaurant and building conversion during Thursday’s CRA board meeting. During his presentation and in response to board members’ questions, he said:
- Construction costs are now estimated at $3.5 million, up from $2.5 million when he applied for the incentives. He estimated Freeman will spend another $3 million to equip and furnish the restaurant.
- Prima 135 is expected to employ nearly 100 people.
- The parking lot Petcoff owns just north of the bank building at the corner of Tennessee Avenue and Main Street will not change immediately, though he hopes to demolish the unused bank drive-through structure in the future.
- Restaurant patrons who use the 55-space parking lot will be able to get their parking validated, although the procedures and parking vendors haven’t been worked out yet.
- A local entrepreneur is planning a downtown valet parking service that would help ease evening parking issues.
- While Freeman plans to seat at least 150 people in Prima 135, the room is 7,500 square feet and won’t feel crowded.
- The second floor of the building will get its own electric supply to prepare for conversion to office space separate from the restaurant. That said, he isn’t planning to lease the second floor yet in hopes the restaurant wants to use the space for something like a dessert room, similar to Tampa’s Bern’s Steakhouse.
- Prima 135 will be open for lunch and dinner, with the lunch options likely to be fewer and less expensive. He also said the Italian theme will allow Freeman to serve less-expensive pasta dishes alongside more expensive meat cuts.
- Petcoff said he and his family have invested in Prima 135 and have confidence in its longevity. He noted Freeman has opened hundreds of restaurants and concluded, “I underwrite people, not business plans, and I think this guy is a good one.”
Video: Oct. 3 CRA Advisory Board meeting
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