In Tampa’s Westshore District, there’s always a building going up or a real estate deal going down.
This year, the district continues to hum with activity - as industry insiders point out during the Westshore Alliance’s 23rd annual development forum in May.
A busy 2025
Midtown East, Westshore’s tallest office building and the crown jewel office tower in the Midtown Tampa mixed-use development, is complete and ready to start moving in tenants. Two sizable luxury apartment developments, 375-unit MetWest Residential and 275-unit Tampa Mariner Street Apartments, are under construction. Tampa International Airport has started construction on a massive expansion project, 16-gate, 615,000 square-foot, $1.5 billion Airside D. When it opens in 2028, it will be TPA’s first new passenger terminal in nearly 20 years.
Then, there are the big deals. In February, BayCare announced the $145 million purchase of a 36-acre parcel in Tampa Bay Park, the office park adjacent to
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Westshore Alliance BayCare Chief Operating Officer Kimberly Guy describes the health system's expansion plans during the Westshore Alliance's annual development forumBayCare’s St. Joseph’s, St. Joseph’s Children’s, and St. Joseph’s Women’s hospitals. The nonprofit health system’s plan for the property’s three office buildings and two parking garages is a $563 million expansion that includes a new home for rapidly growing graduate medical education and research programs, expansion of the BayCare Medical Group physician practice, and new offices for services now housed in leased space - all of it eventually connected to the St Joseph’s campus by a vehicle bridge.
At WestShore Plaza, women’s-only Divine Iron Gym has leased the 50,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Dick’s Sporting Goods and plans to open in early August.
Looking ahead, there’s no construction timeline set for the largest and most transformative project in Westshore - tearing down WestShore Plaza to make way for a massive mixed-use district approximately the same size as Water Street Tampa. Plans for the 52-acre property include office space, a medical center, roughly one million square feet of retail and dining (about the same as WestShore Plaza), a hotel, and 1,700 residential units. The Tampa City Council approved the project in 2024. With the final approval in place, WestShore Plaza owner Washington Prime Group currently has the property up for sale.
Speaking at the May development forum, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor points to the
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Westshore AllianceTampa Mayor Jane Castor at the 23rd annual Westshore Alliance development forum 6,500 businesses and 100,000 workers already in the Westshore District, Tampa International Airport’s world-class reputation and ongoing expansion, the success of Midtown Tampa, and the major changes coming with the BayCare expansion and WestShore Plaza redevelopment.
“The Westshore area, as our city continues to grow successfully, you’re not just part of Tampa’s story,” Castor says. “You are a main character in this city and in our future.”
Here are industry insider insights from this year’s Westshore Alliance development forum.
Office
Class A office tower Midtown East, a joint venture between Midtown Tampa developer Bromley Companies and Tampa’s largest office landlord Highood Properties, received its certificate of occupancy in April.
“It’s an outstanding project, and delivered on time and on budget. You don’t hear that a lot,” Highwoods’ Senior Vice President and Tampa Market Leader Lauren Coup says during the development forum.
Before the first company moves in, the 18-floor, 440,000-square-foot tower is 82 percent leased. Anchor tenant Tampa Electric Co. and Peoples Gas will occupy two-thirds of the building. Energy Insurance Mutual Limited, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Insight Global are also opening offices.
With Midtown East complete, there are currently no new office building projects in the construction pipeline in Westshore, Coup says during the May forum. She says a trio of projects discussed for a few years now - Corporate Center V, Cypress Center IV, and Tampa International Airport’s Sky Center Two - will hopefully come out of the ground when interest rates and the market loosen up.
At the same time, Westshore remains the region’s leading office market, registering its largest numbers since 2014 in the first quarter of 2025, Coup says. Between new deals and renewals, 744,000 square feet of space was leased, she says.
“That’s a huge number for us,” Coup says.
Major deals include insurance giant Geico leasing 190,000 square feet across three buildings in Corporate Oaks Business Park near Tampa International Airport, with plans to bring more than 1,000 jobs. Looking ahead, Coup says she expects to see a trend of underutilized one- and two-story office buildings being razed to make way for mixed-use redevelopment projects.
Multifamily residential
The Westshore Alliance and its member businesses are focused on transforming Westshore into a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly mixed-use live-work-play district. Things are moving in that direction.
Right now, 65 percent of Westshore’s more than 15,000 residents work in the
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ZOM LivingMetWest Residential is scheduled to open in 2026 district, Franklin Street Managing Director, Multifamily Investment Sales Darron Kattan says at the development forum. He says MetWest Residential and Tampa Mariner Street Apartments, the two luxury apartment complexes slated to open in 2026 with a combined 650 units, will continue the transformation by increasing the demand for pedestrian-friendly shopping and dining.
But the real transformation, Kattan says at the development forum, will come when Westshore achieves “scooterfication,” a term he openly acknowledges making up.
“Basically, it’s gentrification where you see the scooters,” Kattan says. “And we still don’t see them in Westshore. I am saddened by that because by now we should have them. What’s holding that back? A couple of things. Number one, there’s just not enough retail on the street and people living here yet.”
Secondly, he says at this point West Shore Boulevard still isn’t a safe route to travel by scooter. Investing impact fees collected on new development into sidewalk and safety improvements will help get the road there, Kattan says. The Westshore Alliance’s long-standing vision to have West Shore transformed into a “grand boulevard” with landscaped medians and pedestrian and bicycle-friendly improvements is also expected to move forward this year.
Kattan says when the WestShore Plaza redevelopment happens, there will be a need for better connectivity between that mixed-use district and International Plaza. That's when he expects to see people getting up and down West Shore Boulevard without a car, “which will be wonderful.”
Retail
“Westshore has been the top retail district (in Tampa Bay) for 28 years and continues to be,” Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Patrick Berman says during the development forum.
Excluding WestShore Plaza, only 130,000 square feet of the more than 8 million square feet of retail space in the district is empty, Berman says. That 1.4 percent vacancy rate is the lowest in Tampa Bay, he says. Retail rental rates are 15 percent above the regional average, he says, but sales are 47 percent higher, making Westshore an attractive and profitable location for retail.
Other than WestShore Plaza, Berman says the largest retail property in the district currently up for sale is the Tampa Bay Center shopping plaza on North Dale Mabry, with tenants that include Ashley Furniture and Floor & Decor.
“If you’ve got $35 million-plus and you want to buy a shopping center, give me a call; I’ll let you know who to speak with,” Berman says.
Hotel
Right now, the only new hotel under construction in the Westshore District or downtown is The Pendry Hotel & Residences downtown, says JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group Senior Director Wyatt Krapf. He says right now there’s uncertainty over the impact tariffs will have on construction costs and the ability of multiple proposed hotel projects to break ground.
In fact, in recent years, two hotels in the Westshore area have come down - the DoubleTree to make way for the Interstate 275 Westshore interchange project and Chase Suite Hotel for residential redevelopment.
“‘The market’s not oversupplied, it’s under-demolished’ was a saying that I’ve heard over the years,” Krapf says.
Still, Tampa Bay’s status as a tourist destination and Tampa’s reputation as an “incredible” host city for events, including the sporting events and concerts at Raymond James Stadium, continue to make Westshore a strong hotel market, he says.
Looking ahead, Krapf thinks the WestShore Plaza redevelopment could fill a gap in the Westshore hotel market.
“Could we use another big full-service convention hotel at the Westshore Plaza?” he says. “I think we certainly could. When you look at peak performance among the rest of the set, we certainly could use that.”
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