Downtown St. Petersburg’s go-to condo builder just grabbed one of the city’s marquee hotel sites. Kolter Group, the developer behind much of the recent high-rise condo surge, has acquired the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront, the waterfront hotel sitting across from the Dalí Museum. The deal hands a high-profile downtown parcel to a company known for turning surface parking and sleepy lots into residential towers. For now, the hotel is still operating while the new owner figures out what comes next.
The transaction closed on March 5, when a subsidiary of Ashford Hospitality Trust sold the property to Kolter Group Acquisitions LLC for $96 million in cash, according to the SEC. The Tampa Bay Business Journal also reported the acquisition and identified Kolter as the buyer. Public filings show the parties completed the transfer in early March as the deal moved toward a first-quarter 2026 closing.
Where It Sits
According to St. Pete Rising, the 15-story hotel stands at 333 1st Street SE on the downtown bayfront, directly across from the Salvador Dalí Museum. Hilton reports that the property has roughly 333 guest rooms, large meeting and event spaces, and sits close to Al Lang Stadium. The hotel’s online meetings and events information remains active while the ownership change is processed.
What Kolter Could Do
Kolter has a history of going big in downtown St. Pete, with large residential projects such as ONE St. Petersburg, Saltaire and Art House, making residential or mixed-use redevelopment a realistic possibility for the Hilton parcel, according to Florida YIMBY. The company previously bought the hotel’s adjacent 1.65-acre parking lot in 2019, a sale documented in company materials and filings that cleared the way for the Saltaire tower next door. As of the sale, Kolter has not released formal plans for the Hilton site.
Zoning, Timeline And Approvals
The Hilton parcel sits in the city’s Downtown Center-1 (DC-1) zoning district, which carries a base floor-area ratio, or FAR, of 3.0 and allows density bonuses that can substantially increase that number, according to the City of St. Petersburg. Those city materials explain how developers can seek bonus FAR, in some cases up to 7.0 for larger towers, in exchange for public benefits such as contributions to housing funds or transfers of development rights. Any move to convert the hotel into a taller residential or mixed-use project would require permits, potential FAR bonus approvals and public review by city staff and boards…