TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa City Council unanimously approved its second reading allowing the WestShore Plaza mall to potentially change the roughly 60-year-old mall into a new multi-use property.

The rezoning would allow the mall to be converted into things like hotels, new retail spaces, restaurants and recreational facilities.

It’s not even noon yet at the Silver Ring Café inside the WestShore Plaza food court, but Nelson Valdes is already taking orders from folks who drive near and far to get a famous Cuban sandwich.

Valdes is the operating partner of the Silver Ring in Tampa, and when he signed his three-year lease at the mall, it was with the knowledge that in the near future, this place might look drastically different.

“They were right up front with me,” Valdes said when referring to the people he spoke with at WestShore Plaza. “They never misled me.”

Valdes says the folks that run the mall told him they’re working on revamping this area, potentially demolishing much of the mall and turning it into new retail spaces and a hotel, among other ideas.

“If they build the apartments and the retail space they’re talking about building, it’s going to it’s going to bring traffic. I mean, it’s going to be a nice place to visit,” Valdes said.

Tampa’s City Council seems to preliminarily agree with this notion too after unanimously approving the second reading to rezone the area.

Despite the excitement, it’s bittersweet for Valdes, because he remembers coming here all the time after school when he was a teenager.

“I came here when I was 16 years old hanging out,” he said. “You know, this is our hangout place from high school when you first got a car in place, goes WestShore Mall.”

Valdes says he was told he would have an opportunity to utilize one of the new spaces once the changes to WestShore Plaza were done.

During its first reading with Tampa City Council, the proposed redevelopment showed nearly two-thousand residential units and hundreds of thousands of square feet for offices and retail space.