Ferries, $214M Hospitals & a $13M Mansion 🚢

June 24, 2026

Another big week here in Tampa Bay. The boats were finally bought for the Tampa-St. Pete ferry, AdventHealth is dropping $214M in Carrollwood, and a Sarasota mansion just broke a neighborhood record at $13.3M. 7 stories. Let's get into it.

🚢 Tampa-St. Pete Ferry Just Bought Its Boats

What happened: PSTA closed on two vessels for the permanent Tampa Bay Ferry.

The details: The agency bought the Bay Breeze and the Clipper using a federal grant worth nearly $4.9 million. Both boats get shipped from San Francisco and Seattle to a Fort Lauderdale shipyard for refurbishment first. The Tampa dock lands near the east end of the Convention Center, with daily downtown-to-downtown service planned once testing wraps.

Why it matters: This is the first real piece of car-free travel between our two downtowns. Owning the boats means the plan is past the talking stage.

My take: Watch what this does to condo demand on both ends. When you can live in St. Pete and skip the bridge to get to Water Street, the whole map changes. We've shot on the Riverwalk plenty, and you can already feel downtown turning into a place people move through by water and foot. The ferry just made that bet bigger.

🏥 AdventHealth Drops $214M on Carrollwood

What happened: AdventHealth started a $214 million expansion of its Carrollwood hospital.

The details: The plan adds a six-story patient tower, a five-story parking garage, 64 new inpatient beds, and a third cardiac cath/EP lab. The tower opens to patients in 2029. It serves a dense, growing stretch of North Tampa where new rooftops keep going up.

Why it matters: Hospitals do not spend $214M on a guess. This is a long bet on Carrollwood and North Tampa staying packed.

My take: Big hospital money pulls medical offices, housing, and service jobs in behind it. Carrollwood has felt quiet on the development side for a while. This wakes it up. If you own near that campus, the next few years get interesting.

🏗️ "Cass United" Files for a 3-Building Wellness Campus

What happened: Rocwell filed permits for a three-building wellness campus on West Cass.

The details: Cass United sits between downtown Tampa, North Hyde Park, and the West River redevelopment. The adaptive-reuse project adds fitness, recovery services like massage and IV therapy, coworking, a market, and a café on the Cass and Rome corner. It becomes one of the biggest planned pieces of that corridor.

Why it matters: West Cass has been a gap between three growing areas. This stitches it together with something people actually use daily.

My take: Wellness keeps showing up as the anchor for new Tampa districts. Water Street did it, West River is doing it, now Cass. When developers lead with gyms and recovery instead of just apartments, they are betting on residents who want to walk to it. That tells you who they think is moving here.

🏛️ Two St. Pete Icons Sell for $32.5M

What happened: Stock Development bought the old Tampa Bay Times tower and the historic Tramor Cafeteria building.

The details: The Naples-based firm paid a combined $32.5 million for 490 1st Ave South and 123 4th St South. Stock plans to tear down the storm-damaged Times building and put a high-rise condo tower on the 1.8-acre site, with ground-floor commercial. They are working with preservation officials to fold the Tramor structure into the project.

Why it matters: This is prime downtown St. Pete land changing hands for big money and going vertical.

My take: Here comes the charm-versus-density fight again. St. Pete loves its old buildings, and it also wants the tax base and housing a tower brings. Keeping the Tramor in the plan is the smart move. Watch how they thread it. The projects that win down there respect the history instead of bulldozing it.

🍝 Forbici Opens at Sundial This Week

What happened: Forbici Modern Italian opens today, June 24 in downtown St. Pete.

The details: The 12,000-square-foot restaurant fills the long-empty former Sea Salt space at Sundial, 183 2nd Ave North. It seats around 350, runs Roman-style pizza and a big outdoor bar, and keeps extended hours through the week.

Why it matters: A vacant anchor spot at Sundial gets a real regional brand. That lifts the whole block.

My take: Pair this with the Times tower sale and the read is simple. Downtown St. Pete is leveling up at the same time on two fronts, dining and density. Filling dead retail with a 350-seat room does as much for street life as a new tower does. Both matter. Both are happening right now.

🎬 Clearwater Lands a $50M Entertainment District

What happened: EVO Entertainment is planning an 83,000-square-foot flagship complex in downtown Clearwater.

The details: The roughly $50 million project sits at Cleveland Street and Myrtle Avenue, billed with what the company calls the largest cinema screen in the world plus Dolby Vision and Atmos in every auditorium. At the same time, the full 600 block of Cleveland Street is under construction, with six buildings and 12 storefronts being rebuilt into a 34,000-square-foot strip of retail, dining, and experience uses.

Why it matters: Downtown Clearwater has waited a long time for a reason to draw crowds at night. This is it.

My take: Clearwater gets slept on next to Tampa and St. Pete. A $50M entertainment anchor plus a full block rebuild gives the downtown a center of gravity it never had. Get the people there at night and the apartments and hotels follow. This is the kind of project that resets a downtown.

💰 Sarasota Mansion Breaks a Record at $13.3M

What happened: A waterfront home in Lido Shores sold for $13.375 million on June 12.

The details: The newly built, 5,882-square-foot bayfront mansion at 424 Bowdoin Circle set a neighborhood price record at roughly $2,274 per square foot. The five-bedroom home blends Sarasota School of Architecture design with heavy home automation and luxury finishes.

Why it matters: Record sales like this set the ceiling that pulls the whole high-end market up with it.

My take: $2,274 a foot tells you buyers down here pay for design and tech, not just water views. Sarasota's bayfront keeps proving it can sit with any luxury market in the state. When the top end keeps climbing, it gives every waterfront owner from Sarasota to Tampa a new number to point at.

That's the week. Boats bought, hospitals growing, two downtowns leveling up at once, and a record sale that says the high end is still rising. The momentum is real, and it is spreading past Tampa to every corner of the Bay. We're all in on Tampa.

See you next week. — Real Tampa Bay

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