Cathy Salustri
One of the most visible commercial buildings in downtown Gulfport is for sale, although Gulfport won’t likely see any noticeable changes right away.
The Texas family – the Packer family – who owns the shopping complex at 3115 Beach Blvd. S., home to the Beach Bazaar, More Bazaar, Zaiya ArtiZen Market, and Dog Pier Hot Dog Shop, has listed the entire complex for sale with a St. Petersburg real estate company. The price tag? $3 million. The sale applies only to the building itself, which encompasses 6,230 square feet and sits on a quarter-acre of land, and not to the tenant businesses.
Gulfport has this site zoned for mixed use in the Waterfront Redevelopment District. Its merchants have a front-row seat for the weekly Tuesday market and any other regular or special events staged downtown.
Although the building was constructed in 1950, prospective buyers who are thinking about tearing it down as soon as the ink is dry on the sales contract might want to think again. According to the real estate listing, the sale is subject to the leases currently in place.
When asked about the length of their current lease, the owners of Beach Bazaar and More Bazaar declined to comment.
Bert Charlie, the owner of the Dog Pier Hot Dog Shop, wants to stick around for a while.
“We have three years remaining on our lease and we hope to fulfill that,” he said.
The owner of Zaiya ArtiZen Market, Jill Rice, said that she has two years remaining on her lease with an option to extend it five years beyond that. Right now she has every intention of exercising the option.
“This is a gold mine,” she said, referring to the store’s prime location. “If I had the money, I’d buy the building myself.”
The Pinellas County Property Appraiser lists the first sale of the 1950 building in 1973, for $80,000. It sold four more times, with the purchase price creeping up incrementally. The Packer family bought in in 2002 for $350,000. The commercial property does receives neither the Save Our Homes cap of 3%, nor does it benefit from any exemptions. Because of this, the property carries a 18.41 mils tax rate, which translated to an almost $13,000 property tax bill in 2021. The tax collector based that $13,000 bill on an assessed value of $764,500; if the property sells $3 million – or close to it – that bill would likely increase.
