Business View Magazine | October 2020

341 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 LARGO, FLOR IDA same stretch of roadway has been milled and resurfaced, with mid-block crossings, all new streetlights, and street furniture (benches, trash cans, bus shelters). Stricklin notes, “Then we’re anchoring it on either end of the entrance to downtown, east and west, with a design that’s just being completed. It’s a significant landscape element at the intersection of two major roadways that is our downtown entrance. On the western end, we’re doing a gateway project that connects the downtown to the Pinellas Trail, which is a 27-mile north-south Rails to Trail that runs the length of Pinellas County. We’re using the Pinellas Trail Bridge that goes over West Bay Drive as the entrance feature, so we have this sense of arrival on either end of the downtown. We’re pretty excited about that.” A development strategy based on activity centers has identified the city’s three economic centers: downtown; an area anchored by Largo Mall; and an area called Largo TriCity, which is very near the center of economic activity for Pinellas County (called the Gateway Area). Speaking to investments made in the historic downtown, as well as the adjacent Clearwater Largo Road District that is also being redeveloped, Stricklin explains, “There has been significant investment in multi-family – the first we’ve had downtown in quite a while. The first was a 29-unit urban loft-style apartment project. A real boutique project - very modern and different for our downtown. But now, we’re seeing apartment development at scale. Rosery Apartments, developed by Rangewater Real Estate is just about to open. It’s a 224-unit apartment complex and we’re really proud of it because it was a former dilapidated mobile home park and now it’s a very urban footprint that adjoins one of our Community Street projects.” Largo has a strategy of reconstructing certain major city streets as “complete streets.” The project was leveraged by the city’s investment in Rosery Road as a Community Street which includes a 10-foot wide multi-use path and on-