The 53-acre Water Street plan will create a new neighborhood hoping to be a national draw Tampa Bay?s waterfront is about to be transformed, with an ambitious $3 billion plan already in motion to turn 53 acres into a sustainable mixed-use district that will see 23,000 people reside within, work at, and visit each day.
A joint effort between Strategic Property Partners, a real estate firm backed by Jeffrey Vinik, owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team, and Cascade Investment, run by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the newly titled Water Street project seeks to add 9 million square feet of new buildings over the next decade, creating a unified neighborhood developers hope will become a destination both locally and nationwide. The first phase should be completed by 2020. ?Compared with other Sun Belt cities we see as competitors, such as Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix, and Charlotte, Tampa Bay has been behind the times and under the radar,? says James Nozar, CEO of Strategic Partners. ?There hasn?t been as much institutional and national resources invested here, and there isn?t really a core to the city. This is a huge opportunity.?

The 53-acre site on the Garrison Channel and Hillsborough Bay has traditionally been plagued by many of the same planning issues that have hindered other urban neighborhoods in the U.S.. A highway divided the area from the rest of the city, much of the warehouses and working waterfront was transformed into surface parking, and...