Work it

When it debuts next month, Armature Works will combine a 700-seat event space with co-work offices, a 170-seat Southern-style steakhouse and a public market with more than a dozen different vendors.

In resurrecting the two-story, former Tampa Electric streetcar warehouse, developer SoHo Capital has blended old with new. Pine floors in the 10,000-square-foot event space, for instance, were repurposed from within the building, and the exposed brick dates back roughly a century.

In addition to the event space, the ground floor of the new Armature Works will feature an indoor/outdoor reception plaza; Steelbach, an open-kitchen restaurant; and the Heights Public Market, where 16 different vendors will ply their wares.

The 1910 N. Ola Ave. building's second floor will contain a co-work space for members that will offer conference rooms, collaborative space and private offices.

Adam Harden, a founding principal of developer SoHo Capital, says the project will “help remake the entrance to downtown.”

“We knew the building could be something special,” he says of the Armature Works purchase, which was completed in 2013.

Armature Works' redevelopment will kick off a 50-acre, mixed-use project. In addition, development continues on The Pearl, a seven-story apartment building with more than 28,000 square feet of retail space.

Harden says future projects within The Heights will include a six-story, 150,000-square-foot office building and a pair of boutique hotels.

In all, the Heights will contain roughly 4 million square feet of space when completed, and be home to more than 600 full-time jobs.

Harden also believes the waterfront project also will be “complimentary” to the $3 billion Water Street Tampa downtown redevelopment, new development in Ybor City and elsewhere.

“It'll compare favorably to other cities and states,” Harden told some 500 attendees of an Urban Land Institute gathering at Armature Works in late January.