The Mall Didn't Move This Summer. The Creek Did.

Drive down Tamiami Trail past The Crossings at Siesta Key this August and it looks the same as it did last August. Same empty anchor boxes where Macy's and Dillard's used to be. Same half-full parking lot. The property has cycled through five names since 1956, and for more than a year now it has worn the label "dead mall," a status that became official when Macy's closed its doors on March 23, 2025 as part of a nationwide round of 66 store closures.

Turn off the Trail and walk the streets behind the South Gate Community Center, though, and you'll see what actually changed this year. Heavy equipment worked the banks of Phillippi Creek most of the winter and spring. Trucks hauled sediment away. A project South Gate residents had been pushing for since before Hurricane Debby flooded their streets in 2024 wrapped its first phase in May, and by the time summer settled in, the difference was already visible behind the community center. If you live here, that's the story that actually touched your neighborhood this year. The mall just sat there.

The mall that's been standing still since March 2025

The paperwork on the Crossings redevelopment has moved. The dirt hasn't. Sarasota's Planning Board recommended approval of Benderson Development's comprehensive plan amendment on a 4-1 vote in May 2024, and the City Commission granted initial approval that October, clearing a path for up to 848 apartments and a mix of retail and office space across the 34-acre site, with 10 percent of units set aside as attainable housing. That's a real plan on paper.

What hasn't shown up is a public site plan, a groundbreaking, or new tenants replacing the vacancies left by Saks Fifth Avenue, Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, and now Macy's. As of the most recent public record, the mall's remaining tenants were CMX Cinebistro, Connors Steak & Seafood, Chico's, and a small Aldi, propping up a property that project officials told public radio station WSLR could take up to two decades to fully redevelop, given the demolition, leasing, and stormwater work still required on site. For a neighborhood that hears "redevelopment" every year or two, the honest update is: still coming, not here yet.

What actually finished behind South Gate this spring

Compare that to Phillippi Creek. Sarasota County's stormwater team spent the winter and spring dredging the "high spots" of the creek between South Tuttle Avenue and South Beneva Road, the stretch that runs directly behind much of South Gate. Construction began December 10, 2025, and by mid-May 2026 the county called the work substantially complete. Crews cut a channel 50 feet wide and 4 feet deep at mean low water along roughly 1.7 miles of creek, removing more than 60,000 cubic yards of sediment in the process, according to Your Observer's coverage of the completion.

Stormwater Director Ben Quartermaine put the scale in blunter terms for county commissioners:

"What we've done is effectively remove high spots along the creek."

He also compared the volume removed to roughly 8,000 dump truck loads, or a football field piled 30 feet deep, in remarks reported by Suncoast Searchlight. Your Observer's own account, drawing on the same project, put the figure closer to 5,400 truckloads. The two numbers don't quite match, which is a useful reminder that even the county's own math on a $14 million project gets rounded differently depending on who's doing the counting. Either way, the material came out, and along with it went an estimated 225,000 pounds of phosphorus and 44,000 pounds of nitrogen that had been sitting in the creek bed, according to a WWSB report on the milestone, a meaningful reduction in what eventually washes into Roberts Bay.

Here's the comparison that matters for anyone deciding how much to celebrate:

Why South Gate pushed for this before anyone else cared

This wasn't a project that appeared out of nowhere. The South Gate Community Association has a Civic Affairs Committee that has spent years on exactly this issue, and the timeline shows why residents didn't wait around for the county to act on its own:

1. 2017 – Sarasota County, with cooperative funding from the Southwest Florida Water Management District, began studying whether the creek's old barrier structure could be removed.
2. January 2019 – The county's Phillippi Creek Barrier Removal Feasibility Study came back citing real flood mitigation and water quality benefits.
3. 2024 – Storm season flooding, including from Hurricane Debby, hit homes along the creek and pushed the issue from a study to an active priority.
4. April 2025 – County commissioners approved a plan to move forward, though pricing and engineering still needed to be finalized.
5. October 8, 2025 – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the permits needed for dredging.
6. October 21, 2025 – The Board of County Commissioners approved the construction contract.
7. December 10, 2025 to May 2026 – Construction ran, then wrapped its first phase.

That patience is baked into South Gate's identity in a literal sense. The South Gate Community Association's own site still keeps a photo from the 1962 flood as a reminder of why the creek matters, and the neighborhood's community pool, described on that same site as "our community's go-to spot for 68 years," sits a short walk from the dam structure the county is still working to remove. That pool is attached to the historically designated Victor Lundy-designed South Gate Center, which means this year's dredging is happening in a neighborhood that has been organizing around this exact creek for most of its existence.

What's still outside the work zone

The completed work covers the main channel between Tuttle and Beneva. It does not cover the oxbow canals that many South Gate homes actually back up to. According to the South Gate Community Association's project update, Mineola, River Ridge, and Seclusion were specifically excluded from Phase 1, and the association is pushing to get them added once Army Corps permits allow. The remnant dam next to the community center is also still standing, pending the county's next phase.

That next phase, the so-called maximum allowable dredge, is expected to remove another 100,000 to 120,000 cubic yards of material from the stretch above U.S. 41 to Beneva Road, including those oxbows and the dam site. County staff are targeting permit approval by fall 2026, with construction potentially starting in early 2027. Commissioner Mark Smith offered the honest caveat that same week, telling the board there's been enough progress to matter, but that "if a major hurricane hits, all bets are off." Worth remembering: Phase 1 addressed roughly 1.7 miles of a creek that runs 7.2 miles total. Most of it is still untouched.

The park stayed open, the market didn't

If you've walked or paddled Phillippi Creek this summer, you've probably noticed the Phillippi Farmhouse Market isn't running. It's a seasonal market, open Wednesdays from October through April, and it stays dark through the summer months. The 60-acre Phillippi Estate Park around it, home to the historic Edson Keith Mansion and the 1916 Keith Farmhouse, stays open daily regardless. During the active months of construction, county officials had put up fencing near the park's Constitution Boulevard entrance and asked visitors to avoid the work zones because of increased truck traffic, a detail that made spring park visits a little different even though the trails, docks, and picnic areas stayed accessible throughout.

What it actually means if you live here

The honest read on South Gate's 2026 is that the slow-moving story got faster and the fast-moving story got slower. The creek project that residents had been chasing since a 2017 feasibility study finally put dredges in the water and pulled tens of thousands of cubic yards of sediment out of the ground behind the neighborhood. The mall redevelopment that cleared its zoning hurdles back in 2024 still hasn't broken ground. Neither outcome is final. The creek's next and arguably more important phase, the one that reaches the oxbow canals where a lot of South Gate actually lives, is still waiting on federal permits. The mall's apartments are still a rendering.

If you've been in South Gate long enough to remember the last time the creek came up over a yard, this year's progress is real, even if it's only the first of two phases. If you've been waiting for the old mall to become something again, the wait continues.

Questions about how any of this touches your specific street, canal, or property line are worth a real conversation, not a guess. If you'd like to talk through what's changing in South Gate or anywhere else on the Suncoast, reach out to Evan Weber. Let's Connect.