Historic restoration of Ybor City’s Sanchez y Haya building begins final phase (City of Tampa).
Just a few years ago, the historic Sanchez y Haya building in Ybor City was an abandoned, dilapidated concrete and brick shell at risk of crumbling to the ground. Today, the historic building enters the final phase of a painstaking renovation to restore its former glory and its original use during Ybor’s Cigar City heyday.
In 1910, Ybor’s first cigarmakers, Ignacio Haya and Serafin Sanchez, opened the building as a restaurant, hotel, and boarding house for cigar workers at their El Reloj factory across the street and out-of-town visitors. Now, El Reloj and Sanchez y Haya’s current owner, family-operated J.C. Newman Cigar Co., plans to reopen the historically renovated building in late 2026 with a first-floor restaurant and bar and a small boutique hotel on the second floor.
During a Nov. 24th groundbreaking ceremony in a fenced-off construction staging area outside Sanchez y Haya, fourth-generation J.C. Newman owner Drew Newman says the family didn’t plan to jump into another project after the historic restoration of El Reloj finished in 2020.
“Sadly, the building was abandoned a few decades ago, and it was neglected,” he says. “It’s been a great example of urban blight…We saw it as observers from across the street. We saw it sit vacant and deteriorate for decades. Lots of people, including our wonderful architects, looked at the building, thought about redeveloping it and restoring it, went inside, and left. We saw this happen time and time again as the building continued to worsen. By 2020, the building was so bad, we thought it was just going to fall down.”
Sanchez y Haya restoration celebrates building’s colorful history. (City of Tampa).
Realizing there was no one else to save this piece of Tampa’s cigar history, J.C. Newman purchased the ramshackle relic across Columbus Drive from El Reloj and started plotting another exhaustive historic renovation project. They were frequently reminded that they were taking on a doozy of a task.
“When we walked through the building with National Park Service staff about 18 months ago, one of them commented off-hand that this is the second-worst building in the state of Florida that they’d ever seen anyone try to bring back,” Newman says. “I still don’t know if that was meant to be a compliment or a statement that we’re just crazy to do much effort it has taken to bring this building back to life.”
He says this 21st century revival adds a new chapter to Sanchez y Haya’s “very colorful history.” Over the decades, the building’s been a Prohibition-era speakeasy, a grocery store, distillery, brewery, knitting shop, coffee mill, and a dive bar. With a restaurant, bar, cigar lounge, gift shop, and boutique hotel in a historically renovated building, Sanchez y Haya is also expected to be a boost for Tampa’s heritage tourism economy, says Abbye Feeley, the city’s Administrator of Development and Economic Opportunity.
Third-generation JC Newman owner Eric Newman and Tampa City Council member Charlie Miranda, who grew up in Ybor City. (City of Tampa).
The $18.5 million renovation’s funding mix includes $5 million from the East Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency, $2.3 million from the National Park, and a $600,000 grant from Hillsborough County. The Sinclair Group is the contractor manager. Rowe Architects is the design firm.
The first phase of restoration work braced the building to keep it standing, and finished just before the 2024 hurricanes hit. In the second phase, Newman says workers went through the “very slow, laborious process” of repairing all the concrete in the building. Work crews manually applied more than 1,400 bags of concrete as they repaired every beam, ceiling, and column one by one. The final phase will restore Sanchez y Haya’s historic design and character.
As Newman introduced Tampa city officials, Congresswoman Kathy Castor, members of the restoration project team, and other dignitaries during the Nov. 24 groundbreaking, he called attention to a special guest. Sanchez y Haya co-owner Serafin Sanchez’s great-great-grandson, Christian Klein, was there to represent his family. Talking with a few reporters, Klein says the time and effort put into the restoration and the decision to return to the building’s original use show the Newmans’ commitment to preserving Ybor’s heritage.
“It’s really cool that this is going to tie these two families together…You can see the labor of love that they’ve put into it,” Klein says.
The Sanchez y Haya restoration also pays tribute to the Newman family’s history. The planned cigar lounge, Stanford’s, and restaurant, Elaine’s, are named in honor of Stanford and Elaine Newman, who moved the family cigar business from Ohio to Tampa and El Reloj in 1954. The 11-room boutique hotel will be The Inn at El Reloj.
For more information, go to El Reloj district