When the City of St. Petersburg wanted to redevelop the Tropicana Field site, home of the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team, they turned to VHB for guidance. Using the Integrated Sustainability Action Plan VHB helped the city develop, the team incorporated green infrastructure, smart city technologies, and healthy community design principles that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reinforce creation of complete neighborhoods.
VHB’s Healthy Mobility Model helped our multi-disciplinary team provide recommendations for mobility and transportation, governance and policy, environmental and sustainability strategies, and community health that were key to the project’s success. The model was used to conduct health risk assessments and assess the correlation between land use, urban design, transportation options, and public health outcomes through data-informed analysis that supported an increased return on investment for future redevelopment projects.
We also evaluated several smart city technologies, such as smart lighting, energy microgrids, and autonomous shuttles linking the redevelopment site to a bordering innovation site that would reduce energy consumption and single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) traffic within the city. VHB’s recommendations were part of the City’s 2021 call for proposals for a master plan to develop the Tropicana Field site.
