Walk the west bank of the Hillsborough River past the University of Tampa right now and you will hit a wall, or more accurately a fence. The trail runs clean along Plant Park's brick plaza, past the university's minarets, and then just stops at Cass Street, dumping you back onto the sidewalk grid to find your own way north. That gap has been there for years. It is about to close.
A 2,000-foot stretch of new Riverwalk between Plant Park and Cass Street is nearing completion, with the city saying it should open before the end of 2026, weather permitting. The Haskell Company is building the 12-foot-wide multiuse path, and it is not a generic strip of concrete. Crews have lined both sides with decorative brick bands designed to echo the university's historic buildings and the existing brickwork in Plant Park, and matched the new light poles to the campus's own fixtures. In one small stretch, they preserved a piece of the original pathway, including stamped concrete dating to the early 1900s, and folded it into the new design rather than paving over it.
The Piece That Was Always Missing
This segment is one part of the West River BUILD project, a nearly $60 million public works effort that is adding about two miles of new Riverwalk and upgrading roughly three miles of surrounding roads on the west side of the river. The money comes from a mix of sources: a $24 million federal BUILD grant, a $10 million contribution from the West Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency, about $7.5 million from the city's Community Investment Tax, and roughly $16.8 million through future non-ad valorem bonds. U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor also secured an additional $250,000 earlier this year for minor enhancements down the line.
What makes the UT segment worth watching isn't just its length. It's the specific gap it closes. According to Tampa's Mobility Director:
"We have six different segments of the West River multi-modal project. This is one of five that are under construction right now. The sixth being the Columbus Drive segment that we are working with Hillsborough County. It is a Hillsborough County-owned roadway."
Once this piece connects, walkers and cyclists on the west bank will finally have an unbroken route through the part of the corridor that has forced the most detours: the stretch hugging the university.
When it opens, the path will also carry some details that read more like a small park than a trail. City officials say roughly 65 new palm trees are going in along the route, plus five hammock stations for resting, studying, or just watching the river go by. It's a deliberate choice for a stretch that runs past a college campus, and it turns what could have been a straight commuter path into somewhere people might actually linger.
Where the Trail Actually Leads
The bigger picture here matters more than one segment. The longest single stretch of the West Riverwalk expansion, once finished, will be a 1.5-mile multi-use trail running along the seawall from Plant Park's brick plaza to the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Complex at Rome Avenue. Along the way it threads together Plant Park, the University of Tampa, Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, Tampa Preparatory School, the Tampa River Center, Blake High School, Stewart Middle Magnet School, and the Rome Yard development.
Some of those connections already exist and are worth knowing about even before the new segment opens. Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park reopened in 2018 after a $35 million reconstruction and has quietly become one of the more useful public spaces on the west side of the river. It has a city-run boathouse supporting kayaks, paddleboards, canoes, and dragon boats, a calm-water harbor and floating dock built for beginners, a splash pad and playground, and a great lawn that can hold 10,000 people for events. It sits right along the path this new segment will eventually feed into.
Further along that same corridor, change is still arriving. The West River district, built on the former site of the North Boulevard Homes public housing complex, now has new apartment buildings filling several blocks and an open Publix grocery store. The first phase of the long-planned Rome Yard development, an affordable and workforce housing building called The Gallery at Rome Yards, is expected to open in December 2026, close enough to the trail's own timeline that both could be functioning within weeks of each other. And at Blake High School, the Tampa Bay Sun of the USL Super League invested millions to renovate Riverfront Stadium into the club's home ground, giving the corridor an actual match-day crowd to go with its joggers and dog walkers.
The West Tampa Community Redevelopment Area's Citizens Advisory Committee has framed the whole project around exactly this kind of stitching together. The goal, in the committee chair's words, is to connect West Tampa to downtown and East Tampa, give people a safe route to work and school, open up the riverfront, and give small businesses in the area a boost.
The Segment Nobody Can Schedule Yet
Here is where the project gets less tidy. Six segments make up the full West River multi-modal network, and five are under active construction:
| Segment | Route | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3 (incl. UT/Plant Park) | Plant Park to Cass Street and surrounding gaps | Under construction, expected to open by end of 2026 |
| 4 | Rome Avenue, Platt Street to Kennedy Boulevard, and Cass Street to Columbus Drive | Under construction |
| 5 | Columbus Drive, Rome Avenue to N. Riverside Drive | Under construction |
| 6 | Ridgewood Park, Columbus Drive to W. 7th Avenue | Not yet started, pending coordination with Hillsborough County |
That sixth segment sits on a county-owned roadway rather than a city one, which means Tampa can't simply schedule it the way it has the rest of the network. No start date has been set. The full West River BUILD project, all six segments combined, is expected to wrap in spring 2027, months after the UT stretch itself opens.
What This Actually Changes for Your Next Walk
For now, the practical reality is this: the Plant Park to Cass Street gap that has forced a street detour for years is close to disappearing, likely by the end of this year. That single stretch won't hand you a continuous loop all the way to Rome Avenue or the MLK Jr. Recreation Complex just yet. Segments 4 and 5 are still under construction, and segment 6 has no timeline at all. But it does mean the walk or ride from Plant Park through the university and up toward Cass Street stops requiring a workaround.
If you already use Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park for a weekend kayak or a lap around the event lawn, this is the piece that eventually stitches your route to campus and, further out, to Rome Avenue. If you haven't walked that stretch of riverbank since before construction started, the new brick paving, the salvaged century-old sidewalk section, and the row of young palm trees are worth a look once the fencing comes down. For anyone tracking how West Tampa is filling in block by block, from the Publix on the West River site to the apartments going up at Rome Yard, this trail is the connective thread the city keeps building toward.
For more on how downtown Tampa's public spaces and neighborhoods fit together, the Tampa neighborhood guide has a broader look, and if walkable corridors are your thing, the recent read on Seminole Heights' dining spine along North Florida Avenue covers a similar kind of neighborhood-level shift happening on the other side of the river.
Following how Tampa's public spaces connect, one segment at a time, is part of what it means to actually know this city rather than just visit it. If you're curious what else is changing in the neighborhoods along the river, or anywhere else in Tampa Bay, Stephen Meyer keeps track of it for a living. Reach out any time to start the conversation.
