Watershed for Water Street

After years of planning, assembling and designing, the company behind the $3 billion Water Street Tampa development is preparing to spark a critical mass of construction that will transform the city’s downtown with new office space, restaurants, residences, hotel rooms, landscaping and roadways. 

By early next year, Strategic Property Partners (SPP), the joint venture between Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC, is expected to be underway on more than a half dozen new buildings or multimillion dollar renovation projects.

A few of the projects have already begun, including work on the new $152.6 million University of South Florida Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute; Sparkman Wharf, an office co-work space and retail and restaurant hub at 615 Channelside Drive; and a roughly $30 million upgrade to the Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina.

Taken together, the construction will add more than 1.5 million square feet of new office and retail space, 1,419 new or updated hotel rooms and hundreds of condominiums for sale and apartments for rent.

The projects are expected to be completed sometime between spring 2019 and late 2021, SPP notes. The Marriott Waterside is scheduled to be completed first next spring, while a five-star Marriott Edition hotel will be delivered in early 2021 and 1001 Water St. is slated to be the final piece that has been announced, opening in late 2021.

The 50-plus-acre tract bounded by East Brorein Street to the north and the Garrison Channel and the Ybor Turning Basin to the south also is poised to become the world’s first WELL-certified community, as designated by the International Well Building Institute, according to SPP.

And more could be in the offing. Late last month, SPP struck a deal to acquire an additional three acres of land, now occupied primarily by an 80-year-old, 80,000-square-foot flour mill just north of its Water Street Tampa site. The company also obtained the right to acquire land owned by the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority.

The roughly $16 million purchase will allow SPP to connect its development to Tampa’s central business district to the north of its property and the Channel District to the east, and provide for an expanded roadway network and crossing for the public on authority property.

When completed over much of the next decade, the mixed-use neighborhood is expected to contain a total of nine million square feet with 3,500 residences together with educational and commercial space and acres of open and recreational uses.

SPP anticipates that more than 23,000 people will live, work or be entertained in the project upon build out.

The map below identifies where each new building in Water Street Tampa will be located, uses and anticipated opening date.