There was a time when the Fowler Avenue corridor was one of the busiest suburban strips in North Tampa. Beginning in the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s, the then four-lane highway was flanked by a booming University Square Mall, fully occupied strip malls and chain restaurants reflecting the popular brands of the era – Bennigan’s, Chi-Chi’s and Fuddruckers among them.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Aquamania, a small water park across from University Square Mall, soaked thrill seekers. Around that same time, disco dancers hustled to Robiconti’s, a Studio 54-style nightclub a few blocks down Fowler Avenue. A kid could be a kid at Toys R Us, and Service Merchandise was the place to shop for fine jewelry and the latest entertainment systems. Locals had numerous grocery options, including Winn-Dixie, Albertsons and Kash n’ Karry.
Then, something happened. The Tampa Palms subdivision emerged a few miles north along Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in the late 1980s. The Hunters Green and Pebble Creek neighborhoods followed suit. Fowler Avenue, once the hottest retail row in North Tampa east of Carrollwood, began losing its luster in the eyes of corporate officers who moved their stores to the tonier suburban climes of New Tampa.
As the 21
st century rolled around, storefronts along Fowler Avenue were emptying. Unfortunate economic news for banner retailers like Montgomery Ward, Service Merchandise and Circuit City left big holes along Fowler Avenue. Many other familiar names either folded from their corporate tops or fled from the corridor for greener pastures beyond the city limits.
By 2010, Fowler Avenue – running through the middle of a rental-dense neighborhood derisively dubbed by locals as “Suitcase City” – had fallen on hard times. But it wasn’t down for the count. A public-private corps of dedicated visionaries took a chance on the North Tampa community and launched an effort to reshape it into a dynamic hub known as Uptown.
“Uptown has incredibly good bones”
In 2014, the firm RD Management LLC purchased the main corridor of University Mall and other smaller segments for $29.5 million. Acquiring other parcels, including a prime 17-acre slice of property once occupied by a massive Sears department store and outlying Sears Auto Center, took further negotiations and millions of dollars. Bowen helped quilt together the various parcels into one cohesive portfolio with a clear vision for the future.
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Joshua McMorrow-HernandezUniversity Mall in 2015, before its multiphase transformation into Rithm.“After investing significant capital and over eight years of our lives to acquire, reassemble, rezone, and reimagine a landmark mall property, Rithm is now starting to come out of the ground,” Christopher M. Bowen, chief development strategist of RD Management, says of the mixed-use development rising on the former mall property.
“Similar to our work in crafting a vision for the greater Uptown neighborhood, this particular project is so massive and challenging that it's not always clear how it's going to ultimately materialize. I'm confident, however, that what is to come will be beautiful and meaningful.”
Bowen knows the challenges and opportunities the area presents.
“Like a beautiful old building, Uptown has incredibly good bones,” he says. “I saw it myself more than 30 years ago, as many others have since, when I first visited the University Area in 1994. Since that time, the star players we all know have grown here even more dramatically in size and rankings.”
He says as redevelopment efforts centered around other parts of the Uptown community, one significant part had long been left out.
“Even with some of the most extraordinary, organic development, even by national standards, coming to life in one particular part of town, we overlooked one of the most important ingredients in developing great neighborhoods, the main street that connects it all together, Fowler Avenue,” Bowen says.
Making a cohesive plan for the Fowler Avenue corridor requires collaboration among private and public players.
“Fortunately, Uptown's innovation foundation, Soaring City – formerly Tampa Innovation Partnership – has been working long and hard over the past five years with the Florida Department of Transportation, Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa, and the local community to create a Main Street vision and plan, with proper administration and funding, for Fowler Avenue,” Bowen says.
Remaking Uptown’s main street
“Fowler’s importance really goes back to the 1950s, if not before that, when [Hillsborough Army Airfield, later Henderson Airport] was operating where the North Tampa Industrial Park is today,” notes Jay Collins, a special area studies manager for the Hillsborough County Planning Commission.
“Fowler is a state road, and there’s always been a lot of public institutions along there," Collins says. "It’s also connecting I-75 and I-275, and that’s spurred a lot of development. New Tampa was developed in the 1980s and ‘90s, and all those subdivisions opening there, along with businesses moving to the north, brought a lot of people to the Fowler corridor.”
Collins has seen the changes along Fowler Avenue firsthand over the past couple of decades. He moved to the area in the early 2000s, worked at the department store Burdines at University Mall, and lived around the corner from the University of South Florida, where he attended college. This personal insight, along with data collected from various studies of Fowler Avenue, is helping him and his team at the Planning Commission curate a comprehensive plan to recreate the corridor as a boulevard.
“There has been a lot of work done on circulator studies,” Collins says. “USF has done one, HART [Hillsborough Area Regional Transit] has done one, and FDOT [Florida Department of Transportation] has studied the roadway and is now in the design phase of that study. The City of Tampa and [Hillsborough] County have looked at 15th Avenue, 22nd Avenue, and we did a land-use study. One of the things that came out of that was rezoning the mall and the area around it as an innovation corridor. This was important because you have to lay some sort of foundation where ownership has a vision and where land-use policy supports that vision, and we do what we can as planners to help move that along.”
One goal of the study is to make Fowler Avenue a safer and more comfortable place for pedestrians and bicyclists.
“Even if Fowler is safe, it’s not an inviting walk,” Collins says. “For example, you’ll notice there aren’t many trees along Fowler, and there’s no shade. And as we head into the summer, it’s hot and raining, shade becomes very important.”
Kris Carson, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Transportation, says the long-term design project for Fowler Avenue focuses on safety and multi-modal enhancements along the corridor from Nebraska Avenue to 56th Street.
“Key highlights include multiple new pedestrian mid-block crosswalks and a wide sidewalk/path on Fowler Avenue, and the project is compatible with planned future premium transit on Fowler Avenue from Nebraska Avenue to Bruce B. Downs Boulevard,” Carson says.
Carson notes the design project is currently in the data-collection phase, which she says “includes obtaining critical existing conditions though right-of-way mapping, topographic survey, and utility designation.” That phase is moving along and should be complete by the end of this summer.
“Once complete, the detailed design can move forward where it is expected that draft diagrams, plans and schematics can be completed and potentially provided to the public to view by the end of 2024 at the earliest,” Carson says.
Looking ahead, locals can expect to see a new pedestrian mid-block crossing at Fowler Avenue and North 52
nd Street in 2025, with some work from the current design project wrapping up in 2027.
Placemaking in Uptown
Retail drove growth along the Fowler Avenue corridor in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the focus is on creating multifaceted destinations. Since 2010, Fowler Avenue has seen the opening of Crossover Church in a former Toys R Us building. Idea Victory
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Joshua McMorrow-HernandezThe IDEA Victory Vinik Campus is a public charter school that operates in
a former flea market building at Nebraska and Fowler avenues in Uptown. public school now educates hundreds of children in a building once occupied by U-Save and later a flea market.
The sprawling Moffitt Cancer Center McKinley Hospital recently opened on McKinley Drive in the North Tampa Industrial Park. The James A. Haley Veterans Hospital and AdventHealth complexes a few blocks north of Fowler Avenue draw thousands who seek state-of-the-art medical services. The Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) continues attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year and will remain fully operational as part of a multiuse redevelopment plan under consideration by Hillsborough County. Just steps to the north, USF’s long-awaited Bulls football stadium is expected to host home games beginning in 2027.
“I’ve been at USF a little over 30 years,” says USF Senior Vice President of University-Community Partnerships Eric Eisenberg. “When I came here, I got the impression that the people who were commuting to campus from South Tampa thought it was like driving to southern Georgia. It was in a place far removed from downtown Tampa life.”
Eisenberg, also a professor of communication at USF, says the area around the campus evolved in a “suburban, car-oriented way” with wide highways connecting I-275 to the west with I-75 to the east.
“And a lot of people coming through here were going to destinations, like the USF campus, Moffitt Cancer Center, Busch Gardens, but otherwise there wasn’t really a reason for a lot of people to come here,” Eisenberg says. “The path we’re on is to move away from that. Yes, Moffitt Cancer Center on the USF campus and McKinley is a world-class institution. There are other great institutions in the area and we have great residents. But not great aesthetics. Is there something to do here after dark? Someplace to go?”
The longtime USF leader envisions big things coming down the pike that will give locals and tourists alike multitudes of options for entertainment, dining and recreation tied to other parts of the Tampa area.
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Joshua McMorrow-HernandezThe Museum of Science and Industry will remain a fixture in the Uptown District as redevelopment occurs on the property around it.“The MOSI property is enormous – like 80 acres,” Eisenberg says. “We are excited about that because it runs across an old rail line that goes to Ybor City, and potentially close to where the Brightline [high-speed train] would come in from Orlando. We want to create a transit ecosystem in the neighborhood.”
He also points to a spread of about 120 acres along Fletcher Avenue, just north of the USF campus, that once fielded the USF Claw golf course.
“We are having a very productive conversation on how we can develop something there while protecting and preserving the riverfront, the woodland and the species living there,” Eisenberg says. “So, we must do something environmentally friendly that also provides a north gateway to the campus and the [incoming football] stadium.”
These hubs surrounding the USF campus could one day serve many purposes.
“One thing we want to create with the MOSI development and the land where the golf course is a main street experience with dining, entertainment, affordable housing, and mass transit.”
The vision is for future developments at the MOSI site or former USF Claw golf course to emulate other models of interconnected, multipurpose centers of commerce already built in the Tampa Bay Area and beyond.
“We see what’s happening with transit in Westshore, in Ybor City, and what we hope to see in Uptown,” remarks USF Assistant Dean for Research and Florida Center for Community Design & Research Director Taryn Sabia.
“It creates a type of transit circle, and that’s a type of robust plan that adds to the economic viability of communities,” Sabia says. “You create a doughnut, everything on the perimeter thrives and everything inside prospers. Fowler [Avenue] is a major component in that bigger picture. It’s not just the road itself – it’s the community around it. It has to do with the larger development patterns, breaking down the scale, and starting to allow it all to work together.”
Much of this ties back to USF’s place in the community.
“Even though USF itself is a destination or an attractor – somewhere just over 40,000 people are on campus any given day – there’s a lot that is missing around it,” Sabia says. “That has a lot to do with types of land use, coupled with a development pattern. Our transportation network is largely tied to the motor vehicle. You shouldn’t have to get in a car to get around campus.”
A thought leader in urban and community design, Sabia says transit challenges persist in Uptown.
“We need to implement a diversified transit system,” she says. “You can’t keep widening roads. You can’t solve traffic with more traffic. We have to build intermodal transit. If we wait any longer, we’ll be too far behind.”
“It’s not about working toward a better Fowler. It’s about creating a reimagined Fowler,” she adds.
Creating economic vitality without pushing people out
Tampa leaders know there’s long been a common problem when “reimagining” a community: displacement of longtime residents. Can Uptown evolve into an economically thriving center and not outprice current residents? Sabia believes so.
“Vibrant economic prosperity is for everyone in this type of community,” she says.
“It is unique in terms of the type of district it will become – very different than downtown, very different than Westshore,” Sabia says. “Each area contributes to creating a palette of amenities and job opportunities. Creating a vibrant place is important but so is not pushing people out.”
Sarah Combs, CEO and executive director of University Area Community Development Corporation (UACDC), has been actively leading affordable housing efforts for years. She and her organization collaborate with local government entities, private developers and community stakeholders to integrate affordable housing in communities through federal and state grants, tax credits and private-public partnerships.
She says there has been construction of new housing along Fowler Avenue over the past decade, but most of it does not fall into the category of affordable. However, she remarks that positive changes are happening on that front in the Uptown community.
“Notably, there has been an uptick in the development of multi-family housing complexes that offer affordable units, thanks to the initiatives and partnerships spearheaded by UACDC,” Combs says. “Additionally, the introduction of mixed-use developments has brought more amenities and services to the area, enhancing the overall living experience for residents.”
One new affordable housing project in the community is Uptown Sky, an apartment complex developed through a partnership between the UACDC and affordable housing developer Blue Sky Communities. Uptown Sky opened in 2023 on a slice of land near the intersection of East Fletcher Avenue and 12
th Street. Another UACDC project is University Townhomes, an attainable housing complex of energy-efficient, three-bedroom townhomes.
The future is poised to bring more changes focused on affordability and accessibility to the Fowler corridor.
“Our strategic plan includes several upcoming projects that will add new affordable housing units to the area,” Combs says. “We are also focusing on sustainable development practices to ensure long-term affordability and environmental responsibility. Moreover, the economic opportunities in the area are poised to expand, driven by new commercial developments and infrastructure improvements. These changes will not only provide more housing options but also create jobs and stimulate local businesses, contributing to a vibrant and economically diverse community.”
Yuengling builds a model for vibrant economic growth
As leaders in the Uptown area eye redevelopment of the MOSI and former USF Claw golf course properties, an example of the type of economic growth they hope to see already brews just a couple blocks south of Fowler Avenue, where Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen serves up the Pennsylvania brewer’s famous beer alongside a menu filled with newfangled culinary concepts and comfort staples.
Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen opened in June 2023 with its large dining hall,
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Joshua McMorrow-HernandezThe Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen opened in 2023 as
a dining hall, entertainment center and community gathering place. conference areas and a sprawling patio that invites people to gather outdoors just steps from its large brewery. Yuengling Chief Operating Officer David Casinelli says the story behind the Draft Haus & Kitchen goes back to a conversation he and Soaring City Innovation Partnership Chief Potential Officer Mark Sharpe had around 2015 or 2016.
“[Sharpe] cold-called the company several times, and eventually he got me on the phone,” recalls Casinelli. “He wanted to share the story about what he was doing to help bring around Uptown, and it intrigued me…That conversation with Mark just caught me. He shared what the future of Uptown was going to be.”
Yuengling bought its Tampa property in 1999, converting what had been a Stroh brewery into the Pottsville, Pennsylvania, company’s first operation outside of the Keystone State. The expansive Tampa property was a strategic purchase for America’s oldest brewery, founded in 1829.
“The ground was important to us, and we sat on that ground for 20 years and didn’t do anything with it,” Casinelli says. “We had a lot of opportunities to sell it, but we just sat on it.”
That conversation between Casinelli and Sharpe moved the needle.
“Before we put a shovel in the ground we tried to get a sense of the community,” Casinelli recalls. “And if we do this, ask ourselves ‘What is the price?’ and ‘Is this a legitimate opportunity to see the community flourish?’”
A huge motivation for Casinelli and his team at Yuengling was that other places were luring visitors away from North Tampa.
“One thing I heard repeatedly from most of the entities whose visitors came to Uptown is that they would be sent downtown for entertainment or to dine,” he says. “That really energized us that there is a need for something like that in Uptown, and that was part of the motive in transforming the Yuengling campus.”
The goal? To create a place where locals and tourists alike could enjoy fine food and good entertainment right in the heart of Uptown.
“We wanted to create a place where people could enjoy those amenities right there,” Casinelli says. “With the Draft Haus & Kitchen we created places for people to relax, unwind, go sit out in the yard... It’s more of an immersive experience.”
Casinelli reminds people the Draft Haus & Kitchen is about the people it serves.
“It’s not Yuengling’s project but the community’s place to go,” he says.
As with any project, the Draft Haus & Kitchen was the culmination of community partnerships.
“It took a lot of time and a lot of entities working together,” Casineilli says. “But to make a long story short, when we finally committed to do something, we looked at what would be important to us, consistent with our brand, and different for the community.”
This teamwork helped the project stay afloat as the worst pandemic in a century hit the world.
“When [the project] came to fruition it was just as COVID was hitting,” Casinelli says. “It didn’t deter us, it just slowed us down dramatically. We worked with a lot of people to get ahead of it and navigated through it.”
A year after the Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen opened, Casinelli says the community has embraced the concept and hopes to see even more people come through the doors.
“I hope we’re a spoke in the wheel, but the challenge for us is to get the word out into the community that we're here,” he says. “Although our entry into Tampa was 25 years ago, there are still a lot of people there who don’t know about us.”
As the Yuengling Draft Haus & Kitchen establishes itself as an entertainment and dining destination, Casinelli sees hope for the community's economic vitality.
“We’re a piece of that,” he says. “Look at what Moffitt has done, what Busch Gardens has done. There are a lot of great economic engines in that area. Mark’s vision is to harness the energy and power of all that. He’s made great steps with that. There’s still a way to go, with cleaning this or that up, working on local infrastructure and making improvements to Fowler Avenue.”
Looking Ahead
Mark Sharpe previously served Hillsborough County for years as a county commissioner before he embarked on a new chapter of his career beyond politics in 2014. He became director of what was then known as Tampa Innovation Alliance, an organization with the mission to reinvent a community long overlooked by businesses and new economic opportunities. It wasn’t a role for the faint of heart. A decade into helming the Soaring City Innovation Partnership, Sharpe remains as focused as ever.
“Think big, move fast, bend time, dent the universe,” he says. “This is how we bring about real change.”
Sharpe is unequivocal about the importance of partnerships in the evolution of the Fowler Avenue corridor over the last decade.
“Without our effort, Uptown would be the same old ‘Suitcase City,’” he says. “We have pushed, prodded, nudged and poked the establishment to rethink how blighted communities are viewed – from an eyesore to a valuable resource, which will become America’s wellspring of talent and essential workers.”
He says the ongoing transformation goes beyond the redevelopment projects that flank Fowler Avenue from I-275 east to 56
th Street and beyond. It’s also reflected in the mindset of the individuals behind this change.
“We experimented with many actionable projects and went from being to doing,” Sharpe says. “Being is playing it safe. Being allows you to talk the talk without actually forging change. Doing can ruffle feathers but is transformative. Uptown is an example of transformative change and Soaring City doing its job.”
Back at Rithm, Bowen reflects on the changes of the last decade.
“The Uptown story is truly about the underdogs of the world,” he says. “Though we may have some of the most remarkable, innovative and highly ranked institutions of higher learning and medicine tirelessly working and researching around the clock in our neighborhood, they are not the ones who will ultimately be credited someday with how incredible Uptown has become. It will be the everyday people who live and work here. Those who care the most about this place and see it for what it is, a place where you can climb to your heart's content and actually reach that place in your heart where you are at your very best.”
Bowen knows Uptown has yet to reach its potential. But he has faith in what the community is becoming.
“If you’re smart, you’ll get into Uptown now,” he says. “Because it’s transforming, and in five years it will be a really, really cool place to be.”
Uptown Timeline - 2007 – The Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners supports a proposal by H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and pharmaceutical company Merck to build its M2GEN initiative, which resulted in construction of Moffitt’s large facility on McKinley Drive – a move Mark Sharpe calls “the catalyst for rapid change” that “birthed the plan for a united effort” in reinventing the community to be known as Uptown.
- 2011 – Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill proposed to University of South Florida (USF) President Judy Genshaft, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay President Jim Dean, and H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center CEO Jack Kolosky an effort to reverse what Sharpe calls “dystopic development patterns along Fowler Avenue.” This collective effort marked the beginning of the Tampa Innovation Alliance.
- 2014 – RD Management buys University Mall for $29.5 million with the goal to transform the property into a live-work-play development.
- 2015 – Sharpe and Tampa Innovation Alliance Chief Operating Officer Eric Larson held a meeting at USF’s Innovation Campus and invited the community to attend. One-hundred thirty people joined that day and, as Sharpe recalls, “the revolution was launched.”
- 2016 – Construction begins on casual-dining restaurant Miller’s Ale House and Chicago-based hot dog chain Portillo’s, positioning themselves as some of the first significant new projects along their stretch of Fowler Avenue in many years.
- 2017 – Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (HART) unveils its HART HyperLINK first-mile, last-mile service in North Tampa utilizing Tesla Model X electric SUVs.
- 2018 – USF’s Sun Dome, which opened in 1980 as a sports and entertainment arena, is renamed the Yuengling Center.
- 2019 – The first of several demolition projects begins at University Mall, which begins its transformation into the multifaceted Rithm development. Chick-fil-A opens its location at 2811 E. Fowler Avenue, one of the first major businesses in the area to incorporate the “Uptown” moniker in its local branding.
- 2020 – The Sears building at University Mall is demolished to make way for Hub Tampa, a major off-campus student housing complex and the first residential project to take shape at Rithm.
- 2021 – AdventHealth opens its $300 million Taneja Center for Surgery on Fletcher Avenue.
- 2022 – Demolition of the prominent Dillard’s building, front-and-center at the former University Mall, is completed. The space gives way to Sprouts Farmers Market, which touts affordable and healthy food options. Sprouts is the first major grocery store to open in the Uptown community in many years.
- 2023 – In January, James A. Haley Veterans Hospital opens its $148.6 million bed tower adding 96 medical-surgical single-patient rooms and 40 intensive care unit beds in 245,000 square feet of new space. Six months later, in July, Moffitt Cancer Center cut the ribbon on its McKinley hospital.
- 2024 – The University of South Florida relocates intramural fields to the southwest side of its Tampa campus in preparation for construction of its Bulls football stadium, with groundbreaking for the $340 million sports complex slated for October.