An 11-story residential tower on a former city maintenance yard in West Tampa has reached its highest point, signaling that the largest mixed-income housing project in the neighborhood is now climbing out of the ground — and that nearly 1,000 new homes are on the way to one of the city’s fastest-changing corridors.
Crews recently placed the final structural beam atop Gallery at Rome Yards, the opening phase of an 18-acre redevelopment at 2309 N. Rome Ave. just west of downtown Tampa. The milestone, known as a topping out, marks the point where the building’s frame is fully in place. For West Tampa, it is the first visible payoff of a long-planned effort to turn an old municipal storage site into a dense, walkable community designed for residents across a wide range of incomes.
What’s being built
Gallery at Rome Yards is the first of several phases in the broader Rome Yards redevelopment, a partnership between the City of Tampa and Related Urban Development Group, the mixed-income housing arm of Related Group. When fully built out, the master plan calls for roughly 954 residential units, along with townhomes, retail and commercial space, and new public amenities meant to stitch the historic waterfront area back into the surrounding city.
The first building alone will deliver 234 apartments. According to the City of Tampa, the unit mix breaks down into 60 one-bedroom apartments, 152 two-bedroom apartments, and 22 three-bedroom apartments. Beyond the housing, the site will include ground-floor retail, co-working space, a fitness center, a dog park, and roughly 230 structured parking spaces. The building is also designed to earn green building certification once finished.
Who the housing is for
Much of the attention around Rome Yards centers on its affordability targets. In the first phase, about 79% of the apartments are set aside as affordable housing, with the remaining 21% reserved for workforce housing. The income tiers are spread across three levels tied to the Area Median Income, or AMI, the regional income benchmark used to set rent and eligibility limits.
That structure is intended to keep deeply affordable apartments and moderately priced workforce units inside the same building. The city has emphasized that every unit, regardless of income tier, will be built to the same quality standards.
- 58 units for households at or below 20% of Area Median Income
- 126 units for households at or below 80% AMI
- 50 workforce units for households earning up to 140% AMI
- Five live/work units designed for small business owners
- A 3,800-square-foot on-site workforce training center
A workforce angle, built in
One feature setting the project apart is a 3,800-square-foot workforce training center planned for the development. The space will offer job training and resume assistance to residents and will be operated by the West Tampa Community Development Corporation in partnership with Related Urban. The first phase also includes five live/work units aimed at small business owners who want to run a business from where they live.
According to Related Urban, Rome Yards is the first major publicly supported Tampa project tied to a Community Benefits Agreement. That agreement commits at least 40% of project participation to women- and minority-owned business enterprises and requires that 40% of new hires be Tampa residents — provisions that local officials have increasingly sought as land values and construction costs climb across the urban core.
The bigger picture across all phases
Zoom out from the first building, and the income mix shifts. Across every phase of Rome Yards, roughly 30% of units are slated to be affordable housing, 43% workforce housing, and 27% market-rate. Taken together, that means about 73% of the full development is expected to fall into the affordable or workforce categories.
| Housing Type | Share Across All Phases |
|---|---|
| Workforce housing | 43% |
| Affordable housing | 30% |
| Market-rate housing | 27% |
Why it matters for West Tampa
The redevelopment lands in a part of the city under steady pressure. West Tampa sits within reach of downtown, Midtown Tampa, and the West River district, and that proximity has accelerated investment while pushing up housing costs in neighborhoods that have long been working-class. A project that locks in income-restricted units at this scale is, in effect, an attempt to keep longtime residents in place even as the area changes around them.
As redevelopment marches west from downtown, affordability has become a central concern for residents who worry about being priced out of their own neighborhoods. Rome Yards is one of the largest local efforts to add housing across income levels in a single development, and its mix of deeply affordable, workforce, and market-rate units offers a test case for how Tampa balances growth with the people who already live here.
City officials have framed the project as a model for inclusive growth. “Gallery at Rome Yards represents the kind of thoughtful, inclusive development our city needs,” Mayor Jane Castor said at the topping-out ceremony, pointing to its goals of expanding housing options and supporting workforce development.
What’s next
With the structural frame complete, work now turns to the building’s exterior, interiors, and systems. Gallery at Rome Yards is expected to be finished in July 2027, with later phases of the broader development following over the coming years. The site’s former life as a city maintenance yard will give way, piece by piece, to a denser residential district connecting the historic waterfront community to the rest of Tampa.
For more local news and updates on growth and development across the city, visit tampa-community.com.
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