Yellow Brick Row Runs on Daylight. Its Night Shift Is Still "Coming Soon."

As of October 12, 2026, Tampa Heights' stretch of North Franklin Street has two kinds of new business. The daytime ones are already serving coffee, scones and pints. The evening ones have websites, hiring pages, a 300-pound disco ball and announced opening months, and none of them has opened. That gap explains what the street is like after dark right now. Three of the four venues that would change it share one address, 1701 North Franklin.

The Daytime Block Filled In With Little Warning

The best example of the daytime side opened this spring behind the blue doors of the Rialto Theatre at 1617 N. Franklin St. In June, That's So Tampa reported that two new concepts had been open for about three weeks: Café Rialto, an espresso bar pouring King State coffee with pastries baked in-house, and Tea at The Rialto, a reservations-only English tearoom serving afternoon tea. A husband-and-wife team runs both. The drinks are named for stars of yesteryear, and one, called The 1924, marks the year the Rialto opened. The theater still books weddings, showers and private events in its larger space.

The café's posted hours are the detail that matters most here. That's So Tampa listed them as Monday through Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The newest addition to Yellow Brick Row closes in the middle of the afternoon.

It joined a block that already ran mostly in daylight. Creative Loafing Tampa put the Rialto, Hidden Springs Ale Works and the Florida School of Woodwork on one block, with Café Hey a block away. Café Hey at 1540 N. Franklin posts daily opening hours on its own site. Hidden Springs keeps its tasting room at 1631 N. Franklin and has an event on its calendar for October 16. The Florida School of Woodwork is advertising hands-on classes for October 2026 and taking enrollment for 2027.

The name comes from this daytime business district. A 2019 report in 83 Degrees traced "Yellow Brick Row" to the district's yellow brick buildings and a Wizard of Oz mural.

The Evening Venues, Listed by Status

The four evening concepts announced for this stretch have more in common than their hours. Each was announced months ahead, each projected a fall 2026 debut, and as of October 12 each one's own site still uses future tense.

Our research found no local report or venue announcement between September 1 and October 12 confirming that any of the four had opened, held a soft opening or set a firm date. We could not review the venues' Instagram feeds, so a date posted only there would not appear in this check.

Peppermint Lounge shows how well the two sides would fit together. According to Creative Loafing Tampa, Rooster & the Till founder Ty Rodriguez plans to run it from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. in the space that once held Elevation Coffee and Flower Crown Kombucha. The plan includes a fresh crate of records each day, LPs played in full, themed nights built around places like CBGB and Muscle Shoals, Jim Marshall's large-format rock photographs on the walls, an outdoor patio and a cash payment option. Rodriguez also told the outlet he wants to offer the room to local music teachers for after-school lessons before the bar opens. If that happens, the lounge would take over at the hour Café Rialto's posted schedule ends.

1701 North Franklin Holds the Rest of the Evening

Three of the four pending venues are in one building. The City of Tampa's designation book calls 1701 N. Franklin the Fariss Building and dates it to 1920. The Downtown Partnership's Franklin Street preservation report lists it as the F.P. Fariss Auto Broker Building, circa 1924. More recently it was the Hall on Franklin, which the Tampa Bay Times described as Tampa's first food hall. It closed in 2020.

The partners named in Times coverage are Joshua Pardue, Dor Haim, Al Rogers, Enrique DeJesus and Robert Stern. In August, Haim told the Tampa Bay Times that the three spaces would bring more than 120 hospitality jobs. The paper reported that the building had been under construction for 18 months. The same article gave the most detailed public description of each venue:

• Boogie Heights takes the second floor with a 1970s-to-early-1990s theme and a 5-foot, 300-plus-pound disco ball imported from the United Kingdom.
• Hail Mary Social Club puts a 360-degree LED screen over its center bar and about 30 TVs around the room. It has a garage door that opens in good weather and a menu from chef David Reyes that Haim said moves beyond fast, fried sports-bar food.
• Uno Más pairs a taqueria with two lounges, the more intimate Cantina and the livelier Chapel. The taqueria is planned to run from early lunch to late night, and the lounges open at happy hour. Level 1 sommelier Sally Gatza is building the bar program for all three venues.

Uno Más is the only one of the three with lunch hours in that description. The rest of the building is designed for happy hour onward.

The projected opening has moved several times this year:

1. Winter. An opening during the winter was the original expectation, according to WhatNow Tampa.
2. Late spring 2026. In mid-March, Pardue told Tampa Bay Business & Wealth the property was expected to open in 60 to 90 days.
3. August 2026. The Times reported staggered openings, with Boogie Heights and Hail Mary in September and Uno Más in October.
4. October 12, 2026. The project's hiring site says "Now hiring · Three venues · Opening 2026."

Restoring a century-old building for three separate hospitality concepts is a long job, and each estimate has been given in good faith. For anyone on this street, the four estimates together set a practical rule. An evening plan on Yellow Brick Row should wait until a venue posts a date, not a season.

Why the Venues Are Betting on Evenings

The evening concepts are betting on more foot traffic, and public money is going toward it. Tampa Bay Business & Wealth reported that the city's CRA approved $6 million in late 2024 for about 1.1 miles of Franklin Street from Jackson Street to Palm Avenue. The money covers sidewalks, pedestrian lighting, crossings and wayfinding and is spread over three fiscal years beginning in FY2026. Pedestrian lighting matters most to a business that opens at 5 p.m.

The same article describes Franklin as Tampa's historic commercial center. I-275, parking lots and vacant buildings later broke the street apart, and the article now presents it as a possible link among Water Street, the Channel District, Tampa Heights and Gasworx. Pardue told the magazine the retail stretch he wants runs from "Big Blue" north to the YMCA. Haim told the Times the 1701 concepts were designed "for a future neighborhood that's going to come around this." For a picture of how the other end of that corridor is changing at street level, see our look at downtown Tampa's ground floors.

October 16 Shows the Street as It Is Now

The current version of the street has a date on the calendar. On Friday, October 16, the Tampa Downtown Partnership holds its quarterly Rhythm & Hues alleyway art show in the Rialto Theater alley at 1617 N. Franklin St., from 6 to 9 p.m. The City of Tampa's listing says it is free, open to the public and requires no registration. Hidden Springs Ale Works, a few addresses up the block at 1631, has its own event scheduled that day. Make-A-Wish holds its 30th Dishes & Wishes at Armature Works, 1910 N. Ola Ave., the same night, 7 to 11 p.m.

That is a full Friday evening on Yellow Brick Row without any of the four pending venues. It runs on an art show held four times a year in an alley behind a 1924 theater, next to a brewery that was already open. The next change to that schedule comes when 1701 or 1607 posts a confirmed opening date.

Retail and hospitality openings along North Franklin can shape how buyers and sellers think about nearby Tampa Heights property, especially within walking distance of 1701 and the Rialto. KVA Group watches Yellow Brick Row the same way, by address and by verified status. If you own near this stretch or are weighing a move into the Tampa Heights blocks around it, Request a Confidential Consultation and we will walk through what the corridor's changes could mean for your property.