The Rumor Mill

So, there is some movement on our oh so delayed plans to move the shop from our old and cramped location on Florida Ave. We tried all we could to move into one of those big warehouses in Ybor - no a/c and no parking, and we tried to get a rehab down in Tampa Heights but the owners are still not budging on their rents. After all the shopping and leasing and introspection we finally listened to one of our good friends and shopping buddies, Karen the owner of Karen's Place on Florida and Osborne. She carved out a little corner of her shop so that we could hang a shingle and continue to move some of our product instead of just store all of that cool stuff we had amassed. We love Karen, but we knew that we still wanted our own place so we decided to wait a while... A while didn't wait for us though and after a little over a month in there, Karen's landlord was getting curious about filling his recently vacated cafe spot on the corner. This spot had been lots of different restaurants, some good, some not so good, but all for some reason or another couldn't make that spot work. It is small for a restaurant with tall ceilings and not much parking. The parking all goes to the antique stores and the residents of the building who are not so bothered by the smallish back parking lot. Anyway, we looked at the spot and it had some pros and cons as they all do. It was about the right size at around 1200 sq ft. It had tall ceilings that we liked and they were starting to expose brick on the outer wall of the place. A lot of the old windows had been painted over and most of the place was filthy with a bathroom straight out of one of those Saw movies. There was exposed wiring left from the last restaurant and the typical coating of grease on the walls of the kitchen area. Probably one of the biggest problems we had with this place was the fact that the parking was in the back and you had to walk all the way to the front sidewalk and face the Florida Ave traffic to get in - unlike the antique stores which all had back door entries. All that being said, it looks like it is going to happen! We are cleaning and painting and they are even adding a pass through door from the nearest neighboring antique store to encourage cross-browsing! We are looking forward to having Adrian and Karen as neighbors, but mostly we are excited that we are able to keep our original neighbors - Seminole Heights. All of the people that supported us in our first location will only need to drive two more blocks to visit the new spot. We are doing all we can to make this more convenient and even better than the first Tampa Street Market. Keep an eye out for an opening in the next few months...