AC Hotel & Moxy Tampa Downtown

McKibbon Hospitality broke ground in April 2026 on a 310-room, dual-branded AC Hotel and Moxy tower in Tampa's Channel District, a block from Water Street Tampa. The 13-story building is targeted to open in early 2028 with a rooftop pool deck and rooftop restaurant among its planned amenities.

The place

The site sits at 111 N. Meridian Avenue in Tampa's Channel District, about a block from the Water Street Tampa development and within walking distance of Sparkman Wharf, Port Tampa Bay's cruise terminal, the Tampa Convention Center and Benchmark International Arena, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The concept

McKibbon Hospitality broke ground on April 28, 2026 on a site previously cleared by an earlier owner, which the developer says simplified site preparation. Coastal Construction is the general contractor, working from a design by Lindsay Pope Brayfield & Associates for a 13-story, roughly 170-foot tower with a distinctive roofline, blue-and-white accents and a podium designed to soften the building's presence along Meridian Avenue's streetscape. It will be the Channel District's tallest and largest hotel by room count once complete, and the neighborhood's second dual-branded property. Splitting 310 rooms between Marriott's design-focused AC Hotels brand and the more youth-oriented, socially driven Moxy format under one roof lets McKibbon target two distinct traveler segments — business and design-minded guests through AC, shorter and more social stays through Moxy — from a single construction project and shared back-of-house.

Dining & wellness

Planned amenities include a ground-level café and wine bar, a fifth-floor pool deck, a rooftop restaurant and bar, more than 6,500 square feet of event and meeting space, and over 10,500 square feet of street-level retail — no restaurant or bar names had been announced as of the April 2026 groundbreaking.