La Tropicana Cuban Cafe’s lunchtime regulars no longer peer out its arched windows surveying Seventh Avenue. The white stuccoed Ybor City hangout stopped serving Cuban sandwiches, deviled crab, and cafe con leche during the early days of COVID-19. The carved wooden table in the corner no longer reserved for Roland Manteiga, the late longtime editor of La Gaceta.
The red phone no longer clatters atop his round table, its ring alerting the neighborhood newsman of fresh news or gossip, oftentimes both. But a new ruby-toned corded beaut will soon make outgoing calls from the same famed table at a reborn Ybor City institution when it reopens come November.
Drew Newman, the fourth-generation owner of J.C. Newman Cigar Co. — Tampa’s final operational traditional cigar factory — intends to give the power table a new home at another fabled Ybor City spot. The company is restoring the 116-year-old Sanchez y Haya building across the street from its factory, building it out ”just like it was” a hundred years ago with a new restaurant, cigar lounge, and inn.
“The building is coming back to life and we’re really excited by it and the potential for this building just to tell Tampa’s story and the story here at Ybor,” Newman said.
Resuscitating it, however, has been a long slog. All that was left of the original space were the giant storefront windows with smashed-out glass and the back bar — which will be restored and reinstalled.
Sanchez y Haya was originally a hotel for cigar factory workers, with a restaurant and bar on the first floor. The Mission-style building has also been a Prohibition-era speakeasy, grocery store, distillery, coffee mill, knitting shop, and eventually, a seedy dive bar, the Chip-In, where then-Police Chief Jane Castor made quite a few calls. The property sat unoccupied and decaying for about 18 years. Most of its interior decorations that weren’t nailed down were stolen. When Newman’s family took over the building in July of 2020, it was on the verge of being condemned.
Six months ago, workers began a full restoration process to bring the dilapidated building back to its onetime flair — with the help of the city, county, state, and even the National Park Service. They also called in RO Architects, the same company that cares for the University of Tampa’s Moorish minarets and the factory’s clock tower, for an assist.
Newman and co. used photos, records, and notes to restore the space to what it looked like.
The first step was to strip the building down, so they could restore the concrete columns and beams. Sanchez y Haya is actually the first building in Tampa to be made out of concrete.
The first thing I noticed about the construction on the corner building is that it was relatively calm, just a few neon-vested men icing the two-story building in stucco. So calm that I checked to make sure I didn’t load the address into Apple Maps incorrectly. But no, the lack of construction workers and throttling noise wasn’t a fluke. Much of the very particular work is done by hand.
“It would have been a lot faster, a lot cheaper, a lot easier for us to knock the building down and just rebuild it,” he said. “But we really believe very strongly in the importance of history and authenticity. So much of Tampa is new, but we want to hang on to what’s historic as well.”
So the building will once again be divided into three spaces, just as it was when it opened in 1910: The Stanford Cigar Club, Elaine’s Restaurant, and the Inn at El Reloj.
The clientele of the forthcoming restaurant might look a little different than the factory worker watering hole of yore, but the space should ooze a similar feel.
“There are some hotels, some restaurants that are very corporate,” Newman said. “We’re the opposite of that. This is very personal. We’re telling an authentic story of Tampa, of Ybor City, of our family.”
Elaine’s — named after Newman’s grandmother — will resurrect dishes from her repertoire, like her beloved cake roll. She became an “excellent chef” in part because of the cigar business.
You see, Newman recounted, his grandparents would travel to Paris for two weeks every year so his grandfather could hunt for Cameroon tobacco at the markets. His grandmother would fill her days by taking cooking classes. She brought her love of cooking home, welcoming folks to the Cigar City by filling their plates.
So it seems cheffing is kind of the second family business. Thus, Newman said they plan to run Elaine’s (and Stanford’s Cigar Lounge) themselves. Nate Siegel — the co-owner of Willa’s and sole owner of Cheeky’s — will help build the menu and stay on through Elaine’s rookie year.
“I was afraid to turn it over to anybody because this project is so personal,” Newman said. “This is our family. It’s across the street from our factory. This is either going to succeed or fail because we’re personally invested and going to make it a success.”
The restored space will boast a similar blend of original details and Ybor-centric touches.
For example, the architect is keeping an open-air breezeway between the side of the second floor in place and deck it out with a behemoth of greenery. The “sky garden” looks directly out on the red-brick clock tower across the way, so guests can look out at El Reloj — and maybe snap a selfie.
The balcony will be outfitted with furniture custom-built for the Inn, but guests will sip on cafe con leche and look out on the same view of the factory as guests did a century ago. Newman said he loves the balcony because even in the depths of summer, you’ll be able to catch a breeze. Spoken like a true Floridian.
Why invest so much money in the space? Or spend so much time and energy on the project?
“This is our neighborhood,” he explained. “We’re not flipping it to sell it. We’re restoring this building so it can stand for another 100 years and be an anchor for our community. ”
Tucked on the northern end of the historic district, the location isn’t what residents typically think of as Ybor City, Newman said.
“We’re on sort of the forgotten side,” he added. “And there’s historic buildings everywhere, and our view is (that) if we do our part to restore our part of the neighborhood and everyone does their part then we can lift up our community together. So our hope is that this project will inspire others to do the same and we can all just preserve this history in Tampa.”
