Channelside tenants bracing for long, slow summer
Summer is always slow for many businesses at Channelside Bay Plaza.
Most of the cruise ships are gone. Hockey is over, and the concert schedule is light at the Tampa Bay Times Forum next door.
With the retail complex’s future still uncertain, this year will be even more sluggish. Some owners of the remaining businesses are barely hanging on. One recently reduced hours, and at least one other is considering closing.
Almost everyone left wonders, “How could this be happening to one of Tampa’s best assets?”
“I never thought they would let it get to this point,” said Conrad Hauca, owner of Cold Stone Creamery, one of the original Channelside tenants. “In the heyday, we’d have a line out the door. Now I’m just trying to stick it out through the summer.”
After that, he’ll have to re-evaluate.
Problems have been mounting for a while, ever since the former owner, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., defaulted on a $27 million mortgage in 2010. That put the complex back in the hands of an Irish bank that hasn’t found a new owner that meets approval of the Tampa Port Authority, which owns the land under the center. Lightning hockey owner Jeff Vinik considered buying it at one point but dropped out amid legal hurdles. Then Liberty Channelside LLC stepped up but got the boot after accusations of being unprofessional and talk about cutting off people’s hands.