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St. Petersburg is strategically located at the heart of the most desirable business location in the country. According to Southern Business & Development Magazine (June, 1998), the Tampa Bay area ranks first for expansion and relocation (replacing Dallas/Ft. Worth). Business Facilities magazine ranks Florida second overall among the fastest growing high tech areas in the country.
St. Petersburg is the largest city in Pinellas County, which ranks number two in the state in number of manufacturing employees.
The cradle of retirement has become a Center of Opportunity. The laid-back beach atmosphere has embraced the energetic drive of East Coast savvy and West Coast entrepreneurialism. In short, things have changed, and changed dramatically.
The transformation has been unusually challenging because of this area's uniqueness. Tourism is still king, but the sandy beaches have also attracted high tech and marine sciences. The vibrancy of a growing, highly-educated workforce has drawn medical manufacturing and health care services. It is the lure of a lifestyle that built St. Petersburg and it is the fruits of that lifestyle which today drive it vigorously into a renaissance.
This new Florida lifestyle is reflected in St. Petersburg?s downtown. Downtown revitalization received a major jump-start in 1998 when Major League Baseball took the field at Tropicana Field. St. Petersburg's waterfront district and downtown has truly undergone a transformation with the completion of BayWalk (entertainment, shopping, and dining complex with a24-screen movie theatre), an expanded McNulty Station (office building), and 3 major luxury condominium high-rise projects: the Florencia (21 stories), the Cloisters (14 stories), and the $65 million dollar expansion to the Renaissance Vinoy Resort, which added four luxury condominium towers (11 stories plus parking each).
As you drive through downtown St. Petersburg now, you'll notice the skyline is every-changing with new high-rise condominium towers and retail shops as well. Progress Energy is currently building its new headquarters building next to the site of the soon-coming Grand Bohemiam Hotel.
Businesses are following, thanks to an incentive program designating a 9.4 square mile section - roughly 16 percent of the city (including all of downtown St. Petersburg) - as an Enterprise Zone. Business owners within the area are eligible for valuable state tax credits when they add new jobs, expand their businesses, make building improvements or hire employees who live in the immediate area. Additional incentives are available throughout the St. Petersburg area for new and expanding businesses. For eligibility requirements, please call the Chamber's Business Soutions division.
Florida ranks fourth in the nation in the number of expanding or relocating businesses. Why? Besides a low 5.5 percent corporate income tax, the free enterprise system is bolstered by the following list of incentives:
~No personal state income tax or sales tax on food or medicine.
~No annual franchise tax on stock or other equity.
~No Unitary tax or property tax on inventory or goods-in-transit.
~No sales and use tax on goods made in the state for export.
~No sales tax on boiler fuels or the cogeneration of electricity.
~No sales or use tax on production machinery or equipment, raw materials, non-reusable containers or packaging, building materials used in commercial construction or professional services. And there are exemptions on sales and use tax for the labor portion of R&D costs.
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