Luxury condos planned for Colonade Restaurant site

TAMPA (FOX 13) - The official groundbreaking was held Thursday for a new luxury condominium tower on Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard.

It's called the Virage and will be built at Bayshore Blvd. and Julia St. on the site of the old Colonade Restaurant.

The luxury building will have 24 stories with 71 units.

The Virage promises to be opulent, but historian Rodney Kite-Powell of the Tampa Bay History Center says that's not new for Bayshore Boulevard.

He says Amelia Chapin had her own personal streetcar that she would park beside her Bayshore mansion.

"And if she wanted to go shopping downtown, she would call ahead and have all the streetcar traffic moved to one side so she could go uninterrupted," says Kite-Powell.

Condo pricing at the Virage starts at $1 million with penthouses priced at nearly $5 million.

The Ascentia Development Group says it hopes to complete construction by late 2019.