When Tampa Premium Outlets opened beside I-75 in October 2015, there were fireworks, a brass band, and long lines at Coach. Saks OFF 5TH anchored the open-air walks, and a footbridge crossed the lagoon outside the Market Hall food court.
Children had a pirate playground from the start. In 2016 Santa's arrival was set for the Christmas lighting, and in 2021 the Wesley Chapel Fall Festival filled the parking lots with food trucks.
In January 2026 Saks Global filed for bankruptcy and put the Tampa store on its list of closings. The anchor the whole outlet was first announced around was set to start its closing sale at the end of that month.
What goes into the space the outlet's first store left behind?
Silt in Cypress Creek stalls a town center
In May 2007, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved filling about 54 acres of wetlands and another 10 of open water on a tract of pasture, woods, and scrub where State Road 56 meets I-75 in southern Pasco County.
Muddy, silt-heavy runoff reached Cypress Creek less than two months after approval.
It was still occurring in 2008 when the Corps suspended the permit that February.
The permit belonged to Cypress Creek Town Center, a project spread over about 507 acres.
By November 2009 its first phase called for a 1.2-million-square-foot regional mall, along with more shops, offices, hotel rooms, apartments, and a movie theater.
Three environmental groups went to court over it.
The Corps reissued the permit in September 2009 with added corrective measures, yet in June 2010 a federal district court sided with the groups on their Clean Water Act and environmental-review claims, though it rejected their endangered-species claim.
In November 2011 the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reversed most of that decision and sent one question back to the Corps: how breaking up the land's habitat could affect the eastern indigo snake.
Pasco County had already given the project more room.
In November 2009, county officials approved steps toward moving its construction deadline from the end of 2011 out to 2021.
When the appeals court issued its amended opinion in January 2012, nothing had been built on the pasture.
Saks OFF 5TH signs first, and 2014 slips
The outlet had its first store before it had a building.
In May 2012, Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH was announced as the first retailer for Tampa Premium Outlets, an outlet center planned for part of the town-center land, with an opening expected in 2014.
The opening stayed on hold while the permit remained unsettled.
In November 2013, after Simon Property Group and the landowner, the Richard E. Jacobs Group, finished another round of work on it, the outlet was promised for the end of 2014, and that date passed too.
A schedule that held came once the land changed hands.
In October 2014, Pasco County approved the site plan, and Simon's Tampa Premium Outlets LLC paid $14.1 million for more than 48 acres.
Simon broke ground that December with an October 2015 opening in view, and nine buildings went up on the pasture south of State Road 56.
By August 2015, nearly 70 of the incoming stores were hiring together at a job fair that offered more than 800 positions.
Tampa Premium Outlets opens beside I-75
Tampa Premium Outlets opened on Thursday, October 29, 2015, as an open-air outlet center at 2300 Grand Cypress Drive in Lutz, Florida, on the south side of State Road 56 just west of I-75, in the Wesley Chapel area.
A brass band played, fireworks went off, and the ribbon was cut ahead of the 10 a.m. opening. Long lines formed at Coach.
More than 90 stores opened in 441,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
Saks OFF 5TH was the anchor, in a space of more than 27,000 square feet, and valet parking was tried at its entrance that first day.
A Disney Store Outlet and a Toys "R" Us Express were among the other tenants, while Johnny Rockets and Villa Italian Kitchen cooked in the food court.
The buildings were joined by covered walks and named courts (Coral, Seashell, and Minnow among them), with more than 300 palms planted around it.
Market Hall, the center's indoor common space, held guest services, the food court, and a television lounge.
Outside, a footbridge crossed the rock-edged lagoon; Adirondack chairs and a fire pit stood nearby.
A pirate-themed playground was built for children.
BJ's arrives and the storefronts fill
BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse opened at the outlet in October 2016, in a building with about 225 seats.
By then Chick-fil-A, Culver's, and Cheddar's were opening or going up on the land around it, and LongHorn Steakhouse had been announced, as the rest of Cypress Creek Town Center filled in around the stores.
At the end of 2016, about 98 percent of the outlet's space was occupied.
Inside, the holidays had a calendar from the start.
That first Thanksgiving, shopping began at 6 p.m.; the outlet stayed open overnight and closed at 10 p.m. on Black Friday.
In October 2016, Market Hall put up a pink sticker wall for a Susan G. Komen fundraiser.
A Christmas lighting and Santa's arrival were set for the evening of November 19, and community groups wrapped gifts for donations through Christmas Eve.
13 stores reopen, and a festival takes the lots
Simon closed its U.S. properties, Tampa Premium Outlets among them, on the evening of March 18, 2020, for the COVID-19 emergency.
The outlet reopened on Monday, May 4, under Florida's first reopening phase, with shorter hours, lower capacity, and signs directing shoppers and spacing them apart.
Only 13 of its roughly 110 stores opened that first day, to light foot traffic, and more came back in the days that followed.
The next year, the Wesley Chapel Fall Festival moved onto the parking lots for October 30 and 31, 2021, bringing more than 80 food trucks, and it returned in October 2023 for its 19th year with a food-truck rally and a trunk-or-treat.
The road to the center changed as well. Homes and stores had kept filling in around the I-75 exit at State Road 56, and traffic with them.
In May 2022 the interchange switched to a diverging diamond, with added lanes, sidewalks on both sides of State Road 56, and a walkway behind barriers down the middle of the bridge.
The state accepted the finished work in April 2023.
Saks OFF 5TH leaves, and its space is leased again
The Cheesecake Factory opened at the center in November 2025 after advertising 275 jobs, and the year ended with the outlet fully occupied.
In January 2026, Saks Global, the parent of Saks OFF 5TH, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Later that month it announced that most OFF 5TH stores would close, the Tampa store among them, with closing sales there set to begin at the end of January.
By May 2026, Old Navy had signed for the former Saks space and set its opening for November.
In August a Disney's Character Warehouse of about 6,000 square feet was announced for the outlet, the third in the country after two in the Orlando area.
In October 2026 the center showed free Halloween movies on Friday nights at The Greenery.
Old Navy and the Disney store are both marked coming soon, alongside a Lids Locker Room and a POP US collectibles shop.
American Eagle is closed for a renovation while a temporary American Eagle trades elsewhere in the center, and the other stores and restaurants are open.
Asian Chao, Auntie Anne's, and Starbucks still serve in Market Hall, and the lagoon, the footbridge, and the pirate playground remain part of the walk.
Simon, the company that built the outlet, still owns it.
The pasture beside I-75 was once drawn up for a regional mall with hotels, apartments, offices, and a movie theater.
What got built is an open-air outlet center of about 470,000 square feet, and Old Navy is due in its anchor space.
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