Shipping containers could begin arriving later this year for North Greenwood’s retail and food hall project after Clearwater’s Community Development Board approved the proposed North Greenwood Container Mall on Tuesday.
The 0.35-acre development is planned for Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Tangerine Street and would include six shipping-container buildings housing restaurants, retail spaces and an outdoor event area built around a central courtyard.
Gloria Campbell, executive director of the Clearwater Urban Leadership Coalition, said the organization expects to begin placing containers on-site by the end of the year and open the project in early 2027. Tenants have already been identified for most of the development’s 10 business spaces, which would focus mainly on food, beer, wine and wellness concepts.
Campbell said the development would serve as a small-business incubator before tenants move into larger commercial spaces.
“We’ll be building infrastructure to bring some of those businesses along so they can move into bigger facilities,” she said.
The project builds on The Grove @ 1105, a redevelopment initiative announced last year to create lower-cost retail space for local entrepreneurs using repurposed shipping containers.
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Campbell described the project as a way to rebuild local business ownership in North Greenwood, where she said no new business facility has been built in roughly 50 years and the development could create “economic empowerment, generational wealth and opportunities.”
The CRA allocated up to $500,000 for container purchases, construction and permitting while authorizing negotiations for a lease and operating agreement with the coalition. Campbell said the organization is also raising an additional $100,000 through a capital campaign.
Project plans call for 15 permanent small businesses and additional pop-up vendors. Organizers project the development could support more than 100 jobs while creating lower-cost entry points for first-time business owners.
Pinellas County Economic Development has worked with future tenants on business planning, budgeting and operations ahead of the project’s opening.
Plans for the site show a pedestrian-focused layout with benches, decorative lighting, bike parking and fire-pit seating surrounding the courtyard. Plans also include landscaped buffers, a 6-foot masonry wall and limited operating hours — 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the week and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays — intended to reduce impacts on nearby residential properties.
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