Construction Underway: AQUALOOP Greywater Recycling Adds 104 Units to Phase 1 of Sky Town in St. Petersburg
ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA – Construction is underway on an AQUALOOP greywater treatment system serving the first phase of Sky Town, the 2,084-unit mixed-use development rising on the former Ceridian campus in the Skyway Marina District. Coral Gables-based developer Altis Cardinal selected AQUALOOP to qualify the project for Florida's 35% greywater density bonus.
ECOVIE worked with Altis Cardinal and the Sky Town design and construction team to integrate onsite greywater treatment into the building design. Design is now underway on Phase 2, which will use the same AQUALOOP configuration.
Here is what the bonus is worth on this project. Phase 1 gained 104 apartments it could not have built by right, bringing the first building to 403 units. Across the full master plan, the 35% bonus adds more than 500 apartments to a base entitlement of 1,463.
That is 500 additional rentable units on land the developer already owns which qualifies by installing a greywater system.
“We are building a high-quality product to address the needs of the underserved middle market,” said Frank Guerra, founder and principal of Altis Cardinal.
Onsite greywater recycling reduces a project's demand for city drinking water and cuts the volume it sends to wastewater treatment.
How Florida's Greywater Density Bonus Works
Florida Statute 403.892 requires every county, municipality, and special district in the state to grant a density or intensity bonus to developers who install qualifying graywater systems. Serve at least 75% of a development and the bonus is 25%. Serve 100% and it rises to 35%. Either way, it stacks on top of any local density bonus that was in effect on July 1, 2021.
For a multifamily project to qualify, three conditions have to hold:
At least 25 dwelling units.
A dedicated system per unit, or a master greywater collection and reuse system for the entire project. The 2022 amendment to the statute added the master-system language, which is what makes the incentive practical for apartments.
Five stories or fewer. The statute does not apply to multifamily projects taller than that.
Sky Town's five-story buildings sit right at that ceiling. The wood-frame wrap product that dominates suburban and infill multifamily development across Florida is exactly the product type this statute was written for.
NSF 350 Class C: The Certification Florida Requires
The Florida Plumbing Code permits treated graywater to be used indoors for flushing toilets and urinals, and requires the systems that do it to comply with NSF/ANSI 350.
That standard has two effluent classes, and the difference matters. Class R applies to single-family homes. Class C applies to multifamily and commercial buildings, and it is the stricter of the two: Class C caps E. coli at a geometric mean of 2.2 MPN/100 mL, where Class R allows 14. For a project like Sky Town, Class C is the only path.
AQUALOOP is certified by NSF International to NSF 350 Class C, the standard recognized by the International and Uniform Plumbing Code authorities. Certification requires 26 weeks of continuous third-party testing, not a one-time sample.
The System
Phase 1 uses a pre-assembled, packaged AQUALOOP 4XGW5400L. It collects shower water, treats it biologically in a membrane bioreactor, ultrafilters it, and holds it in a treated water tank for toilet flushing throughout the building. Certified average throughput is 5,714 gallons per day with estimated throughput for Phase 1 of just over 4,000 GPD.
The AQUALOOP ultrafilter has been third-party tested to remove 99.9999% (6 log) of bacteria and 99.999% (5 log) of virus. Operations are handled through I-CONNECT remote monitoring in addition to a BACnet connection to the building management system (BMS).
Each of the 5 Skytown phases will have its own AQUALOOP 4XGW5400L system. At full build-out, Sky Town will treat and reuse more than 20,000 gallons of greywater a day, water that would otherwise arrive as potable supply and leave as wastewater.
What Sky Town Means for Florida Developers
Sky Town is the largest project underway in St. Petersburg by acreage and unit count outside the Tropicana Field redevelopment, and the largest graywater density bonus project Ecovie has designed to date. Phase 1 also includes 121 income-restricted apartments, supported by $10 million in funding from the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.
For anyone underwriting five-story residential projects in Florida, that scale is the point. The statute has been on the books since 2022. What it has lacked is a project large enough to prove the entitlement math in the real world.
The bonus is not automatic. It requires certification to the local jurisdiction as part of the development approval, a system that satisfies both the Florida Building Code and NSF 350, and coordination with the design team for all building connections to the greywater system.. Get those three right and the units are yours.
If you are evaluating a Florida site and want to know what the greywater density bonus is worth on your pro forma, [talk to Ecovie](LINK: density bonus landing page or ROI calculator).
About the Project Partners
Altis Cardinal is a Coral Gables, Florida real estate investment and development firm and the owner and developer of Sky Town, a $800 million, 34.3-acre redevelopment of the former Ceridian campus in St. Petersburg's Skyway Marina District.
ECOVIE designs and delivers innovative, integrated onsite water use and reuse solutions for commercial and select residential properties, specializing in greywater recycling, rainwater harvesting and use, and stormwater use. Ecovie is the exclusive United States distributor of INTEWA products, including AQUALOOP.
Summit Contracting Group is a Jacksonville, Florida based multifamily general contractor and the general contractor for Sky Town.
ENGR3 is an Alpharetta, Georgia based mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering firm and the MEP engineer of record for Sky Town.
This article describes how Florida Statute 403.892 was applied to one project. ECOVIE designs water systems and does not practice land use law. Applicability to any specific site should be confirmed with land use counsel and the local planning department.