A city-owned building at 450 8th Avenue Southeast in St. Pete will soon become a hub for marine science, defense, and technology companies once a lease proposal is approved by City Council. The St. Petersburg Innovation District has proposed to lease the 30,000 square foot building which was recently vacated by SRI.
Under the proposal, the building would become home to a new project called the St. Petersburg Maritime and Defense Technology Hub (Hub) and will house SPID’s main office. Space in the building would be sub-leased to companies in the city’s Grow Smarter target industries. The building sits in the Innovation District which is anchored by USF St. Petersburg, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, and Bayfront Health St. Petersburg.
The Hub is expected to bring together industry, government, and academia to provide a collaborative environment for its subtenants. The hope is that, while SRI struggled because of their isolation, the Hub will create an environment for tenants to pursue joint funding opportunities and facilitate other collaboration.
“The Innovation District's mission is to develop St. Petersburg into an environment that fosters job growth, economic development, and learning and inspiration by bringing innovative people and organizations together,” says Alison Barlow, Executive Director of the St. Petersburg Innovation District. “The Maritime and Defense Technology Hub will be a key addition to this mission through the work of the curated organizations that will come together in the building and their collective reach into the community.
For more about the Hub out St. Pete Rising.com (click here) , St Pete Catalyst (click here), or the Tampa Bay Business Journal (click here).
Over the last few months I have used this space in the newsletter to create a picture of what it takes to foster innovation. November 2023 newsletter: Innovation is a team sport. It requires diverse perspectives and experiences to find a creative solutions. It requires courage to try things out and be willing to learn what won’t work as much as what will work. It requires tenacity to keep going and going and going.
Thank you to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital (JHACH) for sponsoring and hosting our inaugural Morning Sparks: Innovation X-change breakfast. The event was kicked off by Alicia Schulhof, President of JHACH, and followed by an overview of the topic - Artificial Intelligence - by Dr. John Licato of USF's Advanced Machine and Human Reasoning Lab.
Kudos to the Volunteers of America Florida, City of St. Petersburg, and Pinellas County for the recent opening of the new downtown apartments, located in the Innovation District called Innovare. Innovare’s 50 apartments provide stable homes for individuals and families who earn 60 percent or less of the Area’s Median Income (AMI), including many who are transitioning from homelessness.