Dalí Museum Expansion: St. Pete City Council Approves Lease Amendment

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Plans to expand the Dalí Museum along the waterfront have been revived, as the St. Petersburg City Council took its first steps to allowing the project to move forward.

At its Thursday meeting, the council approved amending the museum’s 99-year lease to allow it to expand onto a 40-foot-wide strip of city-owned land to its west, Fox 13 reported. The new addition would include space for conferences, education and galleries.

For the lease change and expansion to happen, though, it would need to be approved by a referendum vote, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journals. Museum and city leaders would like to see it on the Nov. 8 ballot.

In recent years, the Dalí, which currently has a 60,000-square-foot footprint, previously sought a larger expansion, proposing a 400-car garage and a new 20,000-square-foot building that would house a virtual reality exhibit, event space and a restaurant, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

In 2019, the museum even received $17.5 million from the Pinellas County Tourism Development Council to offset the total estimated $42 million price tag.

The Dalí made its initial expansion request in May 2021. During discussions of these previous plans, concerns arose about the impact the museum’s expansion might have on The Mahaffey Theater and the Firestone Grand Prix races, and the plans were scrapped, reports said.

Now, the potential expansion of the Dalí is back on the table at a time when the city is considering updating the nearby Duke Energy Center for the Arts, home of The Mahaffey.

At Thursday’s meeting, the council chair, Gina Driscoll, said the Dalí’s expansion could serve as a “catalyst” for updating the concert hall, according to reports.

“If this referendum passes, Dalí will be on their way, but guess what, so will the rest of the Center of the Arts and that entire area that is truly seeing some great progress right now,” she said. “We know next year USF is going to get that money for the College of Marine Science and we’ll have another big development to look forward to right there."

Of course, there were still concerns about how construction at the museum could impact The Mahaffey. The council decided that the wording of the lease amendment would include details on ensuring performances at the venue wouldn’t be affected by the expansion.

A public hearing on the proposed lease amendment has been scheduled for Aug. 4.

In a statement, the Dalí told St. Pete Catalyst, “We are excited about the opportunities the museum expansion will bring to our city and county, and we continue to work closely with our neighbors and governmental partners to move the project forward — starting with this referendum. The referendum will not require the city to contribute financially to the project. We are hopeful voting residents will embrace this project as enthusiastically as they did in 2004, when voters approved the referendum that granted The Dalí its current home for multiple generations.”