North of Fletcher Avenue, there's a stretch of land with knobby-kneed cypress trees, moss-covered oaks and older student apartments. It was a golf course from 1967 until USF closed it in 2023. University lore says the course got its name, The Claw, from a tree on the 14th hole with a large claw-shaped branch. On September 8, USF President Moez Limayem broke ground there, joined by two past presidents, Judy Genshaft and Rhea Law.
That groundbreaking is one of three projects with finish dates close together. A football stadium, a state road project and a mixed-use district are all converging on the same few miles of Fowler and Fletcher. Every one of them is still unfinished this fall. By next fall, two of them will be done.
Three timelines, one corridor
These are the published dates, in the order they arrive:
- Late 2026. FDOT expects to start repaving Fowler Avenue from Bruce B. Downs Boulevard to 50th Street.
- September 4, 2027. USF has scheduled the opening game at its on-campus stadium for this date.
- Fall 2027. FDOT expects to finish the Fowler repaving.
- Fall 2028. USF expects the first phase of Uptown Landing to open on the old Claw property.
The Fowler road work is scheduled to run through the stadium's entire final year of construction. Both are expected to finish in the same season. A year from now, Fowler should have a new surface and a stadium crowd on the same fall Saturdays.
Game days still head south, one last time
For now, USF football game days still mean a drive away from campus. The university calls 2026 its final season at Raymond James Stadium, with seven home games there. No North Tampa season has looked like this before, and none will again: a stadium being built in plain view while the team plays across town.
The building is big. USF Athletics puts the stadium and its operations center at $348.5 million, and as of June 30, 2026, the project was on budget and on schedule. The USF Oracle reported 35,000 seats. It also covered the groundwork beneath it: crews injected 4,225 cubic yards of grout at 159 points to stabilize parts of the site, finishing between July and October 2025.
By May 21, 2026, workers were putting up structural steel in the west-end student section. The site had logged 375,890 construction labor hours and nearly 5,000 tons of steel. That May update is the most recent written progress report. The official stadium site has monthly photo galleries, but the newest one is from July 2026. The stadium still has no name. On June 30, Rob Higgins said USF was still weighing naming-rights options and had heard substantial interest from potential partners.
Fowler Avenue gets torn up first
The road work starts before the stadium opens, and it covers more of Fowler than the stadium will. FDOT's Fowler Avenue repaving project runs from Bruce B. Downs Boulevard to 50th Street. It costs $10.3 million, and Preferred Materials, Inc. is the contractor. Beyond new pavement, the plans include:
- Wider bike lanes
- A new wide sidewalk
- Two midblock pedestrian signals, listed on the project page at 14th Street and 17th Street
- A 14-foot paved emergency access connection from the FDOT District 7 headquarters, between McKinley Drive and 46th Street
Sidewalks, bike lanes and pedestrian signals all help people cross and walk along Fowler. A draft multimodal plan for Temple Terrace and the Hillsborough TPO, dated February 2026, makes the connection directly. It says the future stadium could bring more traffic on game and event days, and more demand for walking and biking. The same draft points to places where Fowler could get new crossings. It is still a draft, not an adopted plan.
The section of Fowler farther west has its own, later schedule. FDOT's separate resurfacing from east of Florida Avenue to west of Nebraska Avenue is still in design, with construction expected to start in spring 2029. A safety project on Busch Boulevard at 30th and 40th streets is also in design, with work expected to begin in fall 2029. So the road work around the stadium comes first, and everything else follows over the next few years.
Drivers heading east are already in a work zone. The I-75 widening from the Tampa Bypass Canal to south of Fowler Avenue is underway, with completion estimated in 2029. FDOT's latest scheduled overnight closures of Harney Road under I-75 ran September 27 to October 1 and October 4 to 8, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. FDOT's project page has any closures scheduled after that.
North of Fletcher, a "front door"
Uptown Landing USF is the project with the longest timeline. Business Observer describes the former golf course as a 120-acre property in one place and about 138 acres in another, and it values the project at nearly $500 million. The first phase covers about 27 acres north of Fletcher Avenue and east of North 46th Street. Business Observer reported the planned first phase:
| Component | Planned scale |
|---|---|
| Student housing | 700 beds |
| Apartments | 150 |
| Restaurants | Four to six, plus other retail |
| Hotel | 150 rooms with a conference center |
| Translational Research Institute | About 350,000 square feet |
USF Board of Trustees Chair Mike Griffin said the research building should have room for about 100 researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health, plus roughly 1,000 other researchers. Limayem described the project as "a front door for USF, a gateway for this area, a place to arrive, to belong and to launch." The site is within sight of the new stadium. Limayem said the two projects together are meant to change how students, alumni, visitors and the wider community experience the university.
USF says the neighboring Forest Preserve won't be affected. Environmental advocates have raised concerns about losing a buffer.
What's open and closed this fall
Until those deadlines arrive, a few current changes affect daily routines more than the big projects do.
Cook Out on East Fowler. Tampa Bay's first Cook Out soft-opened July 16 at 5501 E. Fowler Ave. in Temple Terrace. Tampa Bay Beacons reported a drive-through line that wrapped around the building, and the restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. every day. In the same story, district manager Brennan Perkins said he expected it to be "maybe the biggest grand opening ever in all our towns." Creative Loafing covered the official grand opening the next day.
Howl-O-Scream through Halloween. Busch Gardens' separately ticketed event runs on select nights through October 31. Park entry starts at 5 p.m., and the event starts at 7 p.m. New this year are the "Anaconda: Fear Has No Escape" haunted house and three new scare zones.
Lettuce Lake Park, partly closed. In a notice updated August 13, 2026, Hillsborough County said sections of the 3,500-foot boardwalk are closed for repair. Shelters 5 and 7 are closed while that work goes on. The observation tower is closed for reconstruction, and so is the kayak and canoe launch. Rentals are suspended, and private boats can't use the launch either. The notice gives no reopening date. The 1.25-mile paved exercise trail is not listed among the closures.
RITHM at Uptown, still filling in. At the former University Mall, Sprouts and Burlington are open. A March 6, 2026 release from the property's owner said LA Fitness was under construction in a 29,944-square-foot space and scheduled to open in 2026. It also named Portillo's, Miller's Ale House and RaceTrac as pad-site tenants. We could not confirm that any of those four has opened. The same is true of the Dutch Bros planned for the former Wendy's at 1507 E. Fowler Ave., which the Oracle reported in October 2025.
What hasn't been announced yet
Game-day logistics are the biggest open question for anyone who lives near campus. The stadium FAQ puts a large tailgating area west of the stadium near Champions Way. It says specific parking locations will be announced later, and reserved parking will be tied to donor level and premium seating. No traffic plan has been published covering street closures, shuttles or neighborhood access on Fowler, Fletcher, Bruce B. Downs, Holly, Maple or Alumni. Back in February 2024, Temple Terrace's mayor told the Oracle that traffic would increase. He pointed to existing congestion on Fowler and Fletcher and mentioned a possible pedestrian and bike path along Fowler connecting Temple Terrace to the stadium. That plan should be announced sometime before September 4, 2027.
Living near Fowler and Fletcher over the next two years will mean keeping track of all these timelines at once. At Greco Real Estate, we follow the stadium, the road work and Uptown Landing the same way our investor clients do: date by date and project by project. If you'd like to talk through how these timelines affect a property you own or are considering near the USF corridor, book an appointment with our team.
