Investor, partners spend $63 million to amass parcels in Tampa’s Ybor City district

A real estate investor and his partners have spent more than $60 million over the last three years to buy scores of parcels in and near Ybor City, a historic district in Tampa and a popular destination for dining and entertainment.

Darryl Shaw, 50, and his partners have paid about $63 million for at least 110 parcels in the Ybor City area since 2014, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Operating through at least 10 limited liability companies, or LLCs, Shaw and his partners have purchased mostly vacant lots in the Ybor City area but also such properties as offices, stores, restaurants and warehouses.

Shaw’s investment partners include Joe Capitano Sr., a longtime developer in Ybor City who also runs a Tampa company called Radiant Oil, and Jacob “Booky” Buchanan, a real estate investor.

“They grew up in Ybor City and they have a passion for Ybor City,” Shaw told the Tampa Bay Times.

Shaw plans to build residential developments over the next 20 years on the vacant land he and his partners have accumulated in the Ybor City area, located northeast of downtown Tampa.

He told the Tampa Bay Times that Ybor City’s location is a good one for capitalizing on an urbanization trend as more people choose to reside close to their workplaces. But “there’s not a grand master plan,” he told the newspaper.

Some of Shaw’s properties have been discussed as a possible location for a baseball park for the Tampa Bay Rays. The Major League Baseball team may relocate from its existing baseball park in St. Petersburg.

Shaw said he has talked to the team’s management about its interest in putting a ball park on one of his properties, a 7.6-acre site of a former gasification plant called Gas Worx, but the team probably will need a bigger piece of land. [Tampa Bay Times] – Mike Seemuth