Nobody has broken ground at Tierra Verde Marina. Permitting is still in progress, Phase 1 construction isn't scheduled to start until late 2026, and the seven-acre property at 100 Pinellas Bayway South looks, from the road, almost exactly like it did a year ago. And yet residents on the island are already living with the outcome of a redevelopment that hasn't been built. That's the part of this story that hasn't made it into the coverage you've probably already seen.
The 90 Percent Question
Every marina built on submerged state land in Florida operates under a sovereign lands lease, and those leases typically require a fixed share of wet slips to stay open to the public rather than being locked up for private clubs or single owners. At Tierra Verde Marina, that number is 90 percent.
On August 5, Tierra Verde Next, a residents' group representing more than 1,000 island residents, filed a formal complaint with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection alleging that Greenleaf Capital, the marina's owner, has already eliminated public access to those slips. Geoff Comrie, who leads land use and legal efforts for the group, put the finding plainly: the marina's own state lease requires the 90 percent threshold, "yet marina staff told us there are zero public slips available." Comrie said the group found the marina's wet slips occupied primarily by two private boat clubs, a boat rental operation, and pilot boats.
That's not a projection of what redevelopment might do to public boating access on the island. According to the complaint, it's already happened, ahead of the construction timeline everyone has been watching.
What Was Approved in May
To understand why that matters, it helps to separate what the city signed off on from what the state actually controls. In May, the St. Petersburg Development Review Commission approved Greenleaf's $33 million, two-phase redevelopment in a narrow 4-3 vote after a public hearing that ran long on concerns about traffic, hurricane evacuation, storm resiliency, and whether a facility built to store up to 711 boats fits an island residents describe as tranquil. That vote covered land use: two 72-foot dry-storage rack buildings, a three-story Harbor House pavilion with a public restaurant and third-floor bar, retail space, upgraded fueling infrastructure, and stormwater improvements the city says will increase on-site retention capacity by roughly 70 percent.
Rick Kriseman, the former St. Petersburg mayor now serving as a Greenleaf spokesperson, was direct about the public-facing pieces of the plan: "The retail, restaurant and bar are all publicly accessible." That's true as far as it goes. But the DRC vote governed land use and traffic, not the marina's separate obligation to the state as a lessee of submerged public lands. The wet slips are covered by a different document entirely, one the city's approval didn't touch and doesn't enforce. That's the gap Tierra Verde Next is asking the DEP to close, and it's why the complaint went to a state agency instead of back to the commission that already voted in May.
Here's the sequence as it stands:
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| March 2026 | Greenleaf's revised redevelopment proposal first introduced |
| May 2026 | St. Petersburg DRC approves the project, 4-3 |
| August 5, 2026 | Tierra Verde Next files DEP complaint over public slip access |
| Late 2026 | Phase 1 construction expected to begin, roughly 18 months |
| ~2 years after Phase 1 | Phase 2 construction begins |
If the DEP substantiates the complaint, Tierra Verde Next wants Greenleaf's pending permits suspended until the lease issue is resolved, which would stall the whole timeline before the first Phase 1 shovel goes in. Anne Norungolo, a board director with the Tierra Verde Community Association, has said the group isn't opposed to redevelopment outright but wants a plan that keeps the island's character intact and its entrance safe. Whether that plan is the one currently working through permitting is now, in effect, a state question rather than a city one.
The Rest Of The Island Isn't Waiting Either
The marina isn't the only place where residents are managing disruption this month rather than reading about a future one.
At Fort De Soto Park, the county closed Bay Pier for cleaning on August 8 and has another closure scheduled for August 22, both running from park open until noon. The boat ramp is still operating under limited capacity because of hurricane damage, with only one floating dock open to the public while the county finalizes a design that extends the piles upward for better storm resistance. That construction is estimated to wrap by the end of 2026. Anyone who used the park's EV chargers should already know they've been offline since June 1, with no announced return date.
None of that is catastrophic on its own. Taken together, it means the park residents use for a Saturday walk to the fort or a fishing afternoon on the pier looks different this month than it did last summer, and different again from how it will look once the ramp repairs finish.
The Madonna Boulevard Bridge is the quieter story, but for anyone living on Pine Key, the island community that the bridge is the only way in or out of, it's the more immediate one. Pinellas County has construction scheduled from summer 2026 through summer 2028, replacing the existing 120-foot bridge with a longer 180-foot span designed to improve water flow and reduce scour in the canal. Two years is a long runway, and it's already underway.
The Restaurant Scene Keeps Its Footing
Not everything changing on the island this year is a construction notice. In February, Caddy's Sunpubs took over The Island Grille & Raw Bar at 210 Madonna Boulevard, and the new owner has said it plans to keep the name, which matters on an island where that restaurant has been a fixture for beach-day crowds coming off Fort De Soto for years.
A few minutes away, Sea Worthy Fish + Bar has quietly become one of the island's steadiest tables. Chef Jason Ruhe and his wife, Hope Montgomery, opened it after building Brick & Mortar in downtown St. Petersburg, and as of this summer the two restaurants have been open ten years and five years respectively. Ruhe's approach, building the menu around what comes off the boats rather than a fixed distributor list, is the kind of detail that explains why a strip-center seafood spot keeps earning repeat visits from people who could eat anywhere on the water.
The Read On This Season
The pattern across all of this is the same. The paperwork, the permits, the construction schedules, they're all still catching up to changes that have already reached the island. The marina's public boat slips are reportedly already gone, months before the first Phase 1 building goes up. The park's ramp and pier are already limited while the county finalizes plans for storm-resistant docks. The bridge to Pine Key is already under construction two years before it's done. If you're trying to understand what living in Tierra Verde looks like right now, the construction fences and permit dates are lagging indicators. The better ones are what residents can actually do at the marina, the park, and the bridge this week, not what's scheduled to open next year.
That's worth knowing whether you've lived here for twenty years or you're weighing whether this stretch of barrier island still fits how you want to spend a Saturday. If you want a closer look at what any of this means for property on the island, from dock access to how the marina dispute could shape resale conversations down the road, Rosalinda Patino has been tracking Tierra Verde closely and is glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
