Drive down Rome Avenue in North Hyde Park on a Tuesday night right now and you will hit both problems at once. Drilling rigs and orange barrels mark where crews are sinking support shafts forty to fifty feet into the riverbed for two new pedestrian bridges. A block away, at 220 N Rome Avenue, there is a wait for a table at Lumbre, where the wood-fired grill has been turning out paella and pan de cristal since it opened on a Wednesday in mid-July.
Those two things are not competing for your attention by accident. They are the same project landing on the same three blocks at the same time.
What the drilling on Rome Avenue is actually for
The construction is part of the West River BUILD project, a nearly $60 million effort the city broke ground on this year to extend the Tampa Riverwalk along the west side of the Hillsborough River and rebuild the streets around it. Rome Avenue is one of three corridors getting the full treatment, along with Platt Street and Columbus Drive: fresh pavement, protected bike lanes, new sidewalks, better lighting, and safety upgrades tied to the city's Vision Zero push to reduce serious crashes.
The most visible work right now sits in the river itself. Crews are installing nearly 70 drilled shafts and piles to support three new overwater structures: the Platt Street Pedestrian Bridge, the Brorein Street Pedestrian Bridge, and an observation overlook at Tony Jannus Park. Each structure is engineered to hold more than 130 tons, which the city has taken to describing as the weight of about twenty adult elephants. That construction began in May and is still underway.
A separate, more walkable piece of the same project is closer to finished. A nearly 2,000-foot stretch of new Riverwalk between Plant Park and Cass Street, running along the University of Tampa campus, is expected to open by the end of this year. The Haskell Company is building it, and the design deliberately echoes UT's brickwork so the trail reads as an extension of the campus rather than a bolt-on. The full West River BUILD project, bridges included, is targeted for completion in spring 2027.
None of this is happening because the neighborhood needed a scenic path. It is happening because Rome, Platt, and Columbus have carried more foot and bike traffic than they were built for, and the city decided to fund the fix with a $24 million federal BUILD grant plus $10 million from the West Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency.
The restaurants moved in before the sidewalks did
While the city works on the infrastructure underneath Rome Avenue, the development sitting on top of it has spent 2026 filling in fast. Rome Collective sits at 202 N Rome Avenue, right at the northwest corner of Rome and N A Street, a four-building project from Asana Partners that runs close to 39,000 square feet once finished. Lumbre is the tenant that opened first. It comes from chef Nick Orr, whose Spanish training took him through kitchens in Madrid, San Sebastian, Barcelona, and Valencia, and who learned traditional grilling on the coast in Getaria before bringing wood-fired paella and tapas back to North Hyde Park. Bryce Bonsack, culinary director at Tastes Pretty Good Hospitality Group, put it plainly when the restaurant opened: Orr earned the opportunity through years of consistency, leadership, and craft.
Lumbre isn't operating alone for long. Tastes Pretty Good, the same group behind Michelin-starred Rocca and Bib Gourmand Streetlight Taco, has Kingfish, a sushi and sake concept, slated for the same address. Rome Collective is also where Handel's Homemade Ice Cream is opening its first Tampa location. The chain traces back to 1945, when Alice Handel started selling ice cream out of her husband's gas station in Youngstown, Ohio, and it now carries more than 100 flavors under owner Leonard Fisher.
Here is the timeline as it actually stands:
- Lumbre: open, since a Wednesday in mid-July 2026
- Kingfish: announced for Rome Collective, opening pending the final building's completion
- Handel's Homemade Ice Cream: first Tampa location, opening at Rome Collective
- West Riverwalk segment (Plant Park to Cass Street): expected to open by the end of 2026
- Full West River BUILD project, including the Platt and Brorein Street pedestrian bridges: targeted for spring 2027
The restaurant got there first. The sidewalks are catching up, and so is the rest of Rome Collective's tenant list.
Hyde Park Village didn't need the trail to keep growing
It would be easy to read this as one story about a formerly quiet stretch of the river finally getting attention. But Hyde Park Village, the established six-block retail and dining district a short walk south, is having its own year without any help from a construction crew. LoveShackFancy opened its third Florida location there this month, joining a roster that already includes Bouzy for champagne and caviar, Meat Market for steaks and cocktails, the sushi spot ro, and the Michelin-rated On Swann.
The Village didn't need new pavement to keep pulling new tenants. It has been doing that since WS Development took over the property in 2013 and rebuilt its tenant mix from the ground up. What Rome Collective represents is a second center of gravity a few blocks north, one that grew up around a hospitality group with a Michelin-recognized restaurant already on its resume, and one that happens to sit on the exact corridor the city chose to rebuild for foot traffic.
Two restaurant clusters, walkable distance apart, growing for two different reasons. That's worth knowing if you're deciding which end of the neighborhood to park near on a Friday night, because the parking situation and the wait times are shaping up differently at each.
What the finished corridor will actually connect
It's worth being precise about what the trail is and is not doing. Hyde Park, North Hyde Park, and the University of Tampa campus were never far apart. The distance between Rome Collective and Hyde Park Village is a few blocks, walkable in fifteen minutes without any new infrastructure at all. What the West Riverwalk and the Rome Avenue rebuild are doing is making that walk something other than a car trip along a street with no sidewalk buffer and no bike lane.
Once the Plant Park to Cass Street segment opens, the practical change is that someone at Hyde Park Village can walk north along the river, past UT, and land in North Hyde Park without crossing Rome Avenue at grade or sharing a lane with cars. Once the Platt Street and Brorein Street bridges are finished next spring, that same walk extends across the river toward downtown and Tony Jannus Park. The city's language for this is a 12.2-mile continuous path connecting West Tampa, Riverside Heights, Bowman Heights, and Ridgewood Park to the urban core. For someone who already lives on this side of the river, the more immediate change is smaller and more specific: the walk from your block to a wood-fired paella dinner is about to get a sidewalk instead of a shoulder.
The construction noise on Rome Avenue right now is temporary. The reservation wait at the restaurant a block away already is not. Both are worth knowing before you plan your route this fall.
If you're weighing what a stretch like this means for property values or timing a move around it, that's a longer conversation, and it's one Eric Womack Properties is glad to have when you're ready. For now, give yourself extra time getting to dinner on Rome Avenue and go hungry.
