st petersburg

New Dali Museum Opens In Florida

On January 11 at 11:11 a.m., the new Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida had its official opening marked with an exuberant parade featuring Salvador Dali lookalikes with curving mustaches and a whole carnival of characters. The $36 million museum took two years to build and replaced an older museum that had long drawn Dali aficionados around the world. The museum has over 2,140 pieces, including 96 oil paintings and eight master works and is the largest collection of Dali's work outside his home country, Spain. The new larger museum also has a cafe, patio and garden. In between the galleries a 75-foot spiral staircase that takes patrons to the third floor. HOK and the Beck Group designed the museum which has reinforced concrete walls that can protect the artwork from a category 5 hurricane. As Annie Scott reported back in September, the Dali Museum will be occupied throughout 2011 with a special exhibit called Viva la Revelacion!, displaying all paintings and highlighting other major works from the permanent collection to celebrate the new building. Today marks the first day the new museum is open to the public. Admission is $21.

Tags: art, art museum, salvador dali, st petersburg

Russia Right Now with Frontiers Travel

by Bobbie Leigh (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

When it comes to planning a trip to Russia, you need an inside track, a tour planner who speaks the language and knows how to negotiate a tricky bureaucracy. Natasha Tichy, a senior travel consultant at Frontiers Travel, grew up in Russia and worked there as a guide and travel planner. Now, she's introducing Americans in two different trips to places and events they could never manage on their own.

Tags: luxury travel, moscow, russian travel, St Petersburg, volga

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Condos Go On The Block In St. Petersburg

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Real Estate Developments

More condos are hitting the auction block in Florida. Accelerated Marketing Partners has announced an auction for 35 bayfront condominium residences at Signature Place in St. Petersburg, Florida. The auction will be held on March 7 at The Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront hotel. Minimum bids for the residences range from $135,000 to $430,000 and represent a 65 percent price reduction below the last asking prices.

The 36-story, 244-unit Signature Place has a street-level plaza featuring the world's largest water wall spanning 64 feet of black granite. A sixth-floor sky garden has bay views, residents' lounge area, private cabanas, sleek vanishing-edge lap pool, putting green, state-of-the-art fitness center, lawn, and Tai Chi/Sculpture garden. Other amenities include 24-hour concierge and security; high-speed gearless elevators; media and social rooms that give residents additional living space with catering kitchen, bar area and flat screen televisions. The residences have floor-to-ceiling windows, many of which possess panoramic water views. The kitchens have built-in under-cabinet halogen lighting, quartz slab countertops and stainless steel appliance packages.

An article in the St. Petersburg Times has an interview with developer Joel Cantor. His lender Fifth Third Bank is behind the auction, a move that he thinks was premature. The president of Accelerated Marketing Partners believes the auction will actually help sell the other remaining condos by re-calibrating real estate prices and establishing value for the units. Some people who already own units in the building worry that the new lower prices may impact the value of their units, others are just happy that the condo units will be full because then there will be owners to pay into the building's homeowners association fees.

Tags: condo auction, CondoAuction, condominiums, florida, signature place, SignaturePlace, St Petersburg, StPetersburg