Gene McDonald has been shopping at WestShore Plaza long enough to remember what it used to sound like. Standing near the food court in July, he recalled in a WTSP report: "Years ago, it was very busy. You'd come in, the food court was full." That was after Sears, Macy's, and Dick's Sporting Goods had already emptied out their anchor spaces, and just before a Tampa-based firm agreed to pay $135 million that same month for the right to tear the whole thing down.

That spring, a short drive down Boy Scout Boulevard, a different kind of Westshore opening was happening. The Sapphire, a 1950s-style supper club with a 12-foot LED wall and private dining suites, soft-opened on May 15 inside a 17,000-square-foot space that used to be a plastic surgeon's office. Reservations for the full dining experience were booked out for weeks.

Those two things are not the same story, and that is a distinction worth keeping in mind. One is a decades-old enclosed mall, open since 1967, on a slow path toward demolition with no permit filed and no closing date set as of this past August. The other is a restaurant scene that already rebuilt itself this year, on its own schedule, mostly in buildings that have nothing to do with the mall at all. If you live in Westshore and you're trying to figure out what actually changes for you and when, those two clocks are worth telling apart.

The Mall And The Restaurants Around It Aren't the Same Property, Even Though They Share an Address

WestShore Plaza opened in 1967 as the region's first fully air-conditioned shopping center, and the enclosed building that Third Lake Partners now owns still runs about 1.1 million square feet across a roughly 54-acre site. But that enclosed box isn't the whole picture. Ring the mall's perimeter and you hit standalone, pad-site buildings that sit on the same property but operate as their own structures: P.F. Chang's, Seasons 52, Maggiano's Little Italy, Besito.

Local reporting this July noted those four restaurants could be better positioned to survive the redevelopment than anything inside the mall itself, precisely because they're freestanding. In a WTSP report, customer Jeff Croft said, "I mean, the P.F. Chang's. The Seasons 52. Both of them, excellent restaurants. I'm hoping they stay."

The businesses actually facing near-term uncertainty are the ones inside the enclosed mall. Erik Swope-Wise, who has run the Urban Native Store there for six years, has spent recent months reminding customers he's still open. In a Bay News 9 report, he said: "We've done very well for several years." No one has told him or the mall's other interior retailers when their leases end. As of this reporting, the existing enclosed mall and its interior tenants are still expected to absorb the biggest changes, while the perimeter restaurants keep operating in buildings the wrecking ball doesn't need to touch.

What the August Filing Actually Changes, and What It Doesn't

Third Lake Partners closed on the property in July, working alongside St. Petersburg-based Echelon. The city's underlying approval for a mixed-use redevelopment, including shopping, restaurants, office space, apartments, medical offices, a hotel and a transit stop, dates back to 2024, under the mall's previous owner. Third Lake has said it isn't changing that plan in any meaningful way.

What did change, in a filing submitted this August, is how that approved density gets built. The new filing shifts the site from a standard Planned Development to a Planned Development Alternative, splitting the property into 14 separate development blocks connected by a new internal street network. Under the revised plan, the site could eventually include up to 1,765 residences, a 240-room hotel, roughly 900,000 square feet of retail, and about 500,000 square feet of office and medical space.

That filing doesn't add new rights to the property. It changes the sequencing. Third Lake can now build one block at a time instead of committing to the whole 54 acres at once, which means parts of WestShore Plaza could keep operating while construction starts somewhere else on the same lot. As of that August filing, no demolition permit had been submitted and no date had been set for when the mall closes for good. Each phase still needs its own round of city review before shovels go in the ground.

For a resident, the practical read is this: the mall's disappearance is not going to be a single before-and-after moment. It's more likely to be a slow, block-by-block fade that could stretch across several years, with some storefronts closing well before others.

International Plaza Is the Backdrop, Not WestShore Plaza

There's a reason the district's newest dining energy hasn't landed at the mall itself. WestShore Plaza has spent the past several years losing ground to competition from newer retail destinations nearby, including International Plaza, Midtown, and Hyde Park Village. The Sapphire opened inside TriPointe Plaza, a building owned by the New York-based Feil Organization, which sits directly across the street from International Plaza rather than anywhere near WestShore Plaza's footprint.

That geography isn't a coincidence. The energy in Westshore's food and entertainment scene has been following the retail destinations that are still winning, not the one that's being demolished.

The New Restaurants Opened On Their Own Timeline

The Sapphire's opening had nothing to do with the mall's sale. General manager Stephen Hickey, a Tampa native who started his restaurant career in 2004 at Timpano Chophouse and most recently ran the inaugural Eddie V's Prime Seafood in Tampa, has been building the concept inside TriPointe Plaza since well before Third Lake ever closed on WestShore Plaza. Executive chef Taro Larrea leads a kitchen the team describes as a fusion of Venezuelan and Spanish flavors. Feil bought the TriPointe Plaza building back in 2019 for $34.1 million, long before any mall redevelopment was on the table.

A second opening followed the same pattern. White Wolf, described as a rustic follow-up to the cooking at the Michelin-starred restaurant Rocca, was slated to open this spring off Westshore Boulevard, with Bar Spuntino, an Italian aperitivo bar, occupying the rooftop above it. Both concepts come from Tastes Pretty Good Concepts, the same local restaurant group behind Rocca, and both landed within walking distance of the dense cluster of condos and single-family blocks that make up residential Westshore. Like The Sapphire, neither opening waited on or responded to anything happening at WestShore Plaza. They were already in motion on their own calendar.

The Two Clocks Worth Watching

If you live in Westshore right now, it helps to keep these two timelines separate instead of treating them as one story:

• The restaurant clock moves in months. The Sapphire went from a spring announcement to a May 15 soft opening. White Wolf and Bar Spuntino followed a similar spring timeline. If you're waiting on new places to eat and drink nearby, that wave already happened this year.
• The redevelopment clock moves in phases, not dates. The most recent step, filed this August, was a zoning technicality that only changes how the already-approved density gets sequenced across 14 separate blocks. No permit has been filed. No closing date exists yet for the mall.

The version of this story that gets repeated most often treats WestShore Plaza's sale as a single countdown to the neighborhood losing its restaurants. The more accurate version is that the restaurants most residents actually use, the standalone ones ringing the property, are structurally set apart from the enclosed mall facing demolition, and the neighborhood's real dining upgrade this year came from buildings the mall's fate never touched in the first place.

If you're weighing what a home in Westshore looks like once this redevelopment eventually breaks ground, or you just want a clearer read on how a specific block fits into the district's next decade, Serianni Real Estate knows this corridor block by block. Reach out for a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what's on paper.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.