After being vacant for nearly 30 years, the historic Union Trust bank building at 895 Central Avenue in downtown St. Pete will finally be occupied.

The neoclassical former bank’s basement, ground floor, and mezzanine, which spans 10,000 square feet, are set to become a high-end steak and seafood restaurant.

The developer is Jim Fiore, an entrepreneur who worked for Xerox for 34 years while also becoming a real estate investor in Pennsylvania.

Fiore, who lives in downtown St. Pete, began looking for his next project and became interested in the historic Union Trust building, which was constructed in 1926 during the peak of St. Pete’s first big real estate boom and then later expanded in 1938 and 1967.

In 2017, the original 1926 portion of the masonry bank was preserved and blended into the design for Icon Central, a modern apartment complex with retail along Central Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

Fiore doesn’t have a name for the restaurant yet but says it will be a modern, chic, “sexy” steakhouse, along the lines of STK, a chain that has locations in most major U.S. markets as well as global capitals such as Doha, London, Toronto, Mexico City, and Milan, Italy.

“It’s not your traditional steakhouse,” he says. “I’m looking to do something a little different, with a lot of vibe, a ‘wow’ feel, a captivating feel.”

The restaurant’s design is not set in stone, but Fiore says he’s planning to install a bar on each floor, including a 40-foot bar on the ground level, “because I hate going to a place and not being able to get a seat at the bar,” he says.

The mezzanine will also be extended into an L-shape, adding around 2,000 square feet to the existing 10,000 square feet.

Fiore also envisions the basement space as having a high-end lounge area that can be reserved for private events. In a nod to the building’s past life as a bank, “it will probably be called The Vault Lounge,” he says.

Fiore would like to pay homage to the former bank in other ways as well. Back in the 1930s, the Union Trust bank building in downtown St. Pete was the epicenter of business.

Upon crossing the threshold of the bank, customers were greeted by well-dressed tellers working behind brass cages. The interior was adorned with cherry paneling and lavish décor.

A magnificent marble staircase ushered workers down to an expansive vault in the basement and nearly 20 rooms for private deposits or withdrawals from safe deposit boxes.

Union Trust Bank eventually became the largest state-chartered bank in Florida. Nearly every mortgage, land sale, and checking account in St. Pete was initiated at the opulent Union Trust building.

The bank building became vacant in 1996 when Union Trust's successor, Nation’s Bank, now Bank of America, moved out and proposed to tear down the structure to make way for more parking for its loan processing center across the street.

Preservationists threw up their arms, attempting to save the 1926 structure, but interior demolition had already begun. A large amount of marble, brass, and paneling had already been taken out.

In 2004, the City of St. Pete designated the structure a historic landmark, saving the former Union Trust from the wrecking ball.

A year later, developer Jimmy Aviram purchased the site and proposed a $200 million mixed-use project called Arts Village, which would’ve included 600 condominiums and a new home for the Morean Arts Center and Chihuly Collection inside the historic bank building.

However, the market came crashing down in 2007 during the Great Recession and the project, as with many others in town, was canceled.

It wasn’t until the end of 2016 that interest in the property was revived when Related Group purchased the 800 block of Central Avenue for $9.18 million. The Miami-based developer proposed a 15-story, 368-unit luxury apartment tower on the site named Icon Central — now known as Camden Central.

However, building the structured parking garage’s ramping proved difficult unless the bank building was demolished. As a result, a study was commissioned and subsequently found that the 1938 and 1967 additions were not financially viable for reuse and, consequently, the city greenlit the demolition leaving only the original 1926 structure, which sits at the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Dr. MLK Jr. Street.

Although the historic bank building has been available for lease since Icon Central completed construction in 2019, no one has had the ambition to take on such a daunting project.

That is, until now.

Fiore recently signed a lease for the basement, ground floor, and mezzanine of the bank building and promptly enlisted a team of locals to help him turn his dream into a reality. He has tapped local general contractor Brad Hussung of Hussung Construction to lead the buildout of the new steak and seafood restaurant. Largo-based attorney Adam Itzkowitz is also consulting on the project.

“I don’t have any restaurant background, but it was on my bucket list,” Fiore says. “It’s something I was always interested in, but I didn't want to just open any restaurant; I wanted it to be something that was over the top.”

Fiore’s experience is in business and that’s what initially brought him to Tampa Bay.

He wanted to open a Sky Zone Trampoline Park franchise in the Keystone State, but all the territories were taken, so he started looking at other states and homed in on Florida.

“Most of Florida was taken,” Fiore says, “but by luck, the Pinellas County/St. Pete/Clearwater territory was open, so we grabbed it.”

That was about seven years ago, and Fiore’s Sky Zone, located at 13000 66th Street North, in Largo, opened about four and half years ago. “We’re doing very well,” he says. “We’re one of the top franchises in the country.”

Fiore would like to open his steak and seafood restaurant within the year, hopefully in time for the holiday season, and says it helps that he’s not starting from scratch on the project.

“We’re not doing a buildout as far as putting walls up and stuff like that, and we could have multiple vendors working at the same time,” he says, adding that he’s considering the name RARE or J. Fiore’s Contemporary Steakhouse for the restaurant, but that could easily change.

Hopefully, by the end of the year, Fiore will have breathed new life into the historic building and the structure’s grandeur can finally be appreciated again by the residents and visitors of St. Petersburg. Except for this time, while enjoying a meal instead of cashing a check.