Six years is a long time to look at boarded windows on your way to work. If you've driven or walked past 1701 N. Franklin Street since 2020, you know the building: the ghost of a food hall sign, the corner lot at Henderson Avenue, the kind of address that stops being a question and just becomes scenery. One of the partners bringing it back explained the thinking behind the loudest of the three concepts moving in this way:
"So we decided to bring the dance floor back."
That's Dor Haim, one of five partners behind the project, talking about Boogie Heights, the retro dance hall slated for the building's second floor. But the dance hall is only a third of what's happening at that address, and the way the other two-thirds are being built out says more about where Tampa Heights is headed than any single opening does.
A building with a complicated résumé
Before you get excited about tacos and touchdowns, it's worth knowing what this address has already tried and failed to be. The building opened in 2017 as the Hall on Franklin, Tampa's first food hall. It closed in 2020, a pandemic casualty, and sat mostly empty for six years. Earlier still, the same footprint at Henderson and Franklin was home to The Chambers, a sprawling two-story gay bar that was a fixture of Tampa nightlife in its own era. Haim himself has acknowledged that this address has a spotty track record, alluding to at least one earlier attempt to relaunch food service there that reportedly never made it to opening day at all.
None of that is a knock on what's coming. It's context. A building that has already been three different things before this iteration is a building that residents have learned to watch skeptically, and that skepticism is fair until something actually opens.
What's moving in, and in what order
The new ownership group, which includes Al Rogers, Joshua Pardue, Dor Haim, Enrique DeJesus, and Robert Stern, is converting the roughly 16,000-square-foot building into a project some coverage has referred to by the address itself, "1701," with an estimated $15 million going into the buildout. Three separate concepts are moving into the space, and they're intentionally different from each other rather than variations on the same idea.
| Concept | Floor | What it is | Status as of late August |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hail Mary Social Club | Ground floor | Sports bar and social club, described as elevated dining and craft cocktails by day, DJs and a late-night lounge by night | First of the three to be announced publicly, no confirmed opening date |
| Uno Mas: Taqueria + Lounge | Ground floor | Mexico City-style taqueria with two hidden mezcal speakeasies tucked behind it | Window clings and an active Instagram profile, no confirmed opening date |
| Boogie Heights | Second floor | Retro dance hall built around 1970s, '80s, and '90s music, with a disco ball, half-circle booths, and a stage | Renderings released, no confirmed opening date |
Chef David Reyes, a three-time winner at the Tampa Bay Wine and Food Festival who also won at the 2024 Savor St. Pete, is running the kitchen for both Hail Mary and Uno Mas. He arrives after stints as executive chef at Haiku and St. Petersburg Distillery. Hail Mary's interior is being designed by TVS, the architecture firm whose principal is longtime Tampa architect Ken Cowart, AIA.
As of early August, multiple local outlets still had all three concepts listed with an opening date of "TBD." Pardue told reporters back in March that the building would reopen within 60 to 90 days, and later coverage in April pointed toward a rollout across the summer. The 60-to-90-day window has clearly come and gone, and even the broader summer 2026 timeline other outlets floated is down to its final week or two without a public grand-opening date attached to any of the three, which tells you the rollout is real but slower than the initial timeline suggested. Pardue has also said the openings will be staggered on purpose, with Hail Mary expected to lead.
Why stacking three concepts in one building is a different bet
Tampa Heights already has a model for how a single address pulls in a crowd of different kinds of visitors: Armature Works, the restored 73,000-square-foot streetcar warehouse a short walk away on the Hillsborough River. That building works by spreading multiple food and drink vendors across one large horizontal footprint under a single ownership umbrella, so a visitor wanders between stalls inside the Heights Public Market.
Seminole Heights, a few miles north, has been building its own version of density differently again. Three separate kitchens opened along a two and a half mile stretch of North Florida Avenue over roughly twelve months, each at its own address, each drawing its own crowd on its own schedule.
1701 Franklin is neither of those. It's compressing three completely different registers, a casual taco counter, a game-day sports bar, and a late-night dance floor, into two floors of one 16,000-square-foot building under one shared address. Pardue has said he expects guests to move between the three rooms over the course of a single night rather than picking one and going home. That's a much tighter bet than either the Armature Works model or the Seminole Heights model. It assumes a Friday night in Tampa Heights can start with tacos, run through a ballgame, and end on a dance floor without anyone getting back in a car.
The public money betting on the same block
The private investment at 1701 Franklin isn't happening in isolation. Tampa's Community Redevelopment Agency approved roughly $6 million for what's called the Franklin Street Vision project, covering sidewalk, lighting, and street-level improvements along the corridor, with funding spread across three fiscal years beginning in fiscal year 2026. Pardue, who also owns other properties along the same stretch, has argued that the corridor running from what he calls "Big Blue" north to the YMCA has the raw ingredients to become one of the city's more walkable retail streets if enough of its vacant buildings come back online.
That's the part worth sitting with if you live nearby. A single new bar opening is a restaurant story. A $15 million private buildout landing on the same three-year window as a $6 million public streetscape investment is a corridor story, and it means the sidewalks and lighting outside 1701 Franklin are scheduled to improve at roughly the same pace as what's happening inside it.
What this actually looks like on a Tuesday, or a Friday
Until firm opening dates land, the honest answer is that nothing has changed yet for your weekly routine. But the groundwork for a genuinely different kind of night out in Tampa Heights is already visible if you know where to look.
A short walk away, Armature Works is already proving that this stretch of the Heights District draws people out consistently. The Riverwalk-facing food hall runs a 5K Run Club with Fit2Run every first and third Wednesday, and hosted a Rides by the River car show on August 15 that drew hundreds of collector cars and local automotive vendors. None of that traffic depends on 1701 Franklin opening. It's evidence that the appetite for a reason to walk this corridor already exists, which is exactly the audience Hail Mary, Uno Mas, and Boogie Heights are betting will draw in once their own doors open.
For now, the most useful thing a Tampa Heights resident can do is what people have already been doing for months: watch the windows at Henderson and Franklin. The building has a complicated history and a slower rollout than its own developers first promised. It also has real money behind it, real infrastructure improvements scheduled alongside it, and a staffing roster with an actual track record in Tampa kitchens. Whether three very different concepts under one roof can pull off a night where you never have to move your car is the kind of thing this neighborhood will find out together, one staggered opening at a time.
If you're curious about how projects like this tend to shape property values and buyer interest along a corridor once they're fully open, that's the kind of local read Greco Real Estate tracks closely across Tampa Heights and the rest of the Tampa Bay market. Reach out anytime to talk through what you're seeing in the neighborhood.
