555 Quay Commons

The rate itself is the cheaper of the downtown options. Total 14.8815 mills across twelve authorities: the school board at 6.0950 across three lines, the city at 3.2730 plus 0.1348 of debt, the county at 3.2273 plus 0.0667, emergency medical services at 0.7300, the public hospital board at 1.0420, and small lines for water management, mosquito control, a trail debt levy and the inland navigation district. This parcel is outside the downtown improvement district, which would add a flat two mills.

Then the comparison that inverts what we published about the sibling site. This parcel and the larger bayfront site a few hundred metres north were the two halves of one 2022 hotel purchase. This one is carried at about $43,274,400 against the other's $72,895,800, so it is worth 59 per cent as much, and it pays about $644,000 a year against the other's $410,000. Fifty-seven per cent more tax on fifty-nine per cent of the value.

The whole difference is the ten per cent cap on non homestead assessments, and here it is worth nothing. At the sibling parcel the cap is binding and holds about 62 per cent of the site's value off the roll, worth roughly $675,100 a year. At this parcel the just value, the assessed value and the taxable value are the same number in both roll years, so the cap has nothing to bite on. The cap is a feature of a rising assessment, not of Quay bayfront land, and two adjacent parcels from one closing give opposite answers.

On land value this is the most expensive dirt in the series. About $584 a square foot, against about $470 at the sibling site and about $163 on a downtown Main Street site eight blocks inland. Per approved unit it is the cheaper of the two, because it is entitled at about 46 units to the acre against the sibling's 33.

We also recovered the assessor's own pricing formula for this district, which is worth knowing if you ever argue an assessment. The roll values Quay land per approved dwelling unit rather than per square foot. The base is $152,000 a unit, and bayfront parcels carry a view adjustment of 3.65 times that, producing $554,800 a unit here. The arithmetic closes to the dollar with no residual. Two inland Quay parcels carry the base and no adjustment.

On the build cost, the permit is unusually forthcoming. About $149,688,000 declared across roughly 365,400 square feet, which is about $1,919,000 a unit and about $410 a square foot of permitted floor area, and roughly 4,685 square feet of gross floor area per unit before common space is netted out. Adding the land brings declared land and hard cost to about $2,474,000 a unit before soft costs, financing, fit-out and profit. That is not a price and no price exists in any record.

The homestead exemption does very little at this level. It saves a flat $591.70 a year at any assessed value at or above $75,000, which on the median unit at the nearest brand comparable is under one per cent of the bill and on its top unit under half of one per cent. The assessment growth cap that travels with it is the part worth having over a decade. The county publishes no per parcel split between county and school portions, so we computed the saving from the rate table's own school columns.

The practical version: the millage code is the cheaper downtown one and there is no district surcharge here. What you cannot price is the association, and on a twenty storey bayfront tower with a replaced seawall it is the number that will decide your carrying cost. Non ad valorem assessments in this county sit behind a tax collector that blocks automated retrieval, so every figure above is the ad valorem bill only, and this county has no ad valorem community development districts at all.

For once the flood picture is simple, and the simplicity is the finding. Queried at eleven points spanning the whole parcel, the federal maps return the same answer every time: inside the special flood hazard area with a base flood elevation of eight feet, on a panel that took effect in 2024. The county's own layer agrees at the same coordinates. Two sites in this series returned three and four different answers on a single parcel; this one returns one.

The ground is flat in a way no natural parcel is. Lidar runs 3.8 to 5.6 feet across the site, a spread of under two feet, against four and a half feet on a Palm Avenue parcel and five feet on a Gulf front one. That is engineered fill behind a seawall. And every point of it sits below the eight foot base flood.

The building's answer is in the permit, and it is candid. The permitted finished floor for the garage and commercial level is about 5.5 feet, roughly two and a half feet below base flood, with the first residential floor about ten feet above that. The federal flood review on this permit took five months, the longest of its four review tracks. Ask what flood openings and materials the lower level is built to, and what the finished elevation certificate says.

The evacuation answer is the same as the rest of the bayfront. Level A, a category one zone, modelled for a ten foot surge, at all eleven points including the one at the seawall itself. That is the coastal high hazard area on the statutory definition, and it is the first address ordered out in the weakest storm. One useful data note: the county's evacuation layer usually stops at the waterline and returns nothing at a shoreline point, but it does not do that here, because this parcel's western boundary is a seawall inside the mapped polygon rather than an open shore.

On the postcode claim record the usual caveat applies and is worth stating. This postcode has recorded about 1,179 federal flood insurance claims and roughly $108.4 million paid across the life of the programme, with 744 claims and about $100.2 million in 2024 alone, which is 92.5 per cent of every dollar ever paid. Those claims come from across a postcode that also contains ground sixteen feet higher and a Gulf front island, so they are not attributable to this parcel.

Within that year the damage came from the storm that missed rather than the one that landed. The September 2024 storm produced 514 claims and about $93.7 million here; the October storm that actually made landfall in this county produced 210 and about $5.0 million, so the one that missed out-paid the landfall nearly nineteen to one. The 2022 hurricane that dominates Florida insurance conversation produced eight claims in this postcode in the whole year.

On schools this address matches its bayfront neighbour exactly. The elementary and middle layers return the same kindergarten through eighth campus, so a child here changes buildings once rather than twice, and the high school is a third school again. Eight blocks south, in the same postcode and the same downtown, three entirely different schools apply. Confirm with the district before you contract.

The best read on who buys at this end of the Quay is the two completed towers on the same street. The nearest brand comparable runs 73 units with 67 per cent homesteaded and 73 distinct owners for 73 units, so not one person holds two. The larger tower next to it runs 149 units with 44 per cent homesteaded, 148 distinct owners and a largest single holding of two units, and the sponsor has retained nothing in either. That is close to zero ownership concentration in both, and it inverts the assumption that the more expensive building is the more speculative one.