A downtown lot the city has spent more than a decade trying to redevelop moved a step closer to becoming a boutique hotel when the Planning and Zoning Board unanimously recommended approval of the Tarpon Registry’s site plan.
The City Commission is scheduled to consider the site plan at its Oct. 13 meeting.
The project calls for a two-story, 11,731-square-foot mixed-use building on the vacant 8,112-square-foot property at 144 E. Tarpon Ave., Planning and Zoning Director Allie Keen told the board. It would include a 15-room hotel above ground-floor retail, a restaurant, event space and an open courtyard.
“The proposed uses will increase downtown activity and benefit the surrounding businesses,” Keen said, adding that the project “not only provides retail and event space but also offers much-needed and desired lodging within the heart of downtown.”
The site’s history dates to 1906, when Granville E. Noblit, one of the city’s original settlers, built the first of three buildings that would eventually occupy the lot. Constructed in phases between 1906 and the 1960s, the buildings housed a warehouse store and a bakery, with apartments upstairs.
By the 1980s and 1990s, the lone remaining building had fallen into disrepair. The city acquired the property and in 2009 demolished the building, which by then had trees growing through its roof.
In 2012, the city sold the land to its Community Redevelopment Agency in hopes of attracting a developer. The search dragged on for more than a decade. In October 2025, the CRA board selected Infill Studio’s proposal for a boutique hotel with retail and event space on the ground floor. The City Commission approved a development agreement for the project that December, and in July the Heritage Preservation Board granted it a certificate of appropriateness.