"I care deeply about The Chattaway and what it means to the residents of St. Petersburg." That is what Cullen Mahoney told the Tampa Bay Times back in March, when he was still just the prospective buyer of a restaurant everyone assumed was about to disappear. Five months later, the sale he was talking about is closing this month, and the ending nobody expected to write is the one actually happening on the ground in Old Southeast.
If you live in this neighborhood, you already know the shape of the story. What you may not know is the mechanism behind the rescue, and why it is the second time in three years St. Petersburg has run this exact play to save a beloved old building from becoming something else entirely.
What Closed on Facebook in March
On March 17, 2026, the Tampa Bay Times reported that The Chattaway was being sold, and a post to the restaurant's own Facebook page confirmed the closure with few details attached. The building at 358 22nd Avenue South, a wooden structure raised on a pie-shaped lot at the corner of 4th Street and 22nd Avenue South, had been serving burgers since 1951, when Jillian Frers, an immigrant from England, opened the restaurant that would become one of the city's original drive-ins. Frers eventually handed the lead to her eldest daughter, Debby Kitto, and her son Greg Kitto told Creative Loafing the pending closure felt bittersweet after 75 years in the family.
For a stretch of the spring, the plan for the property was genuinely uncertain. The family talked about hosting a yard sale to send Chattaway memorabilia and decor home with regulars. Neighbors on r/StPetersburgFL swapped stories about the tea room, the patio, and the burger everyone calls the Chattaburger. Nobody outside the deal knew what would happen to the pink-and-green paint job or the walls covered in decades of photographs.
The Fear Wasn't Really About Burgers
Mark Ferguson, who owns Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill, put the real anxiety into words when he later explained why he joined the deal. "I was afraid somebody was going to buy it and turn it into townhouses," he told St Pete Catalyst.
That is the version of this story that matters if you live within walking distance of the place. A restaurant closing is a loss. A restaurant site converted to something else entirely is a different kind of loss, one that changes the corner permanently rather than just changing what's on the menu. Old Southeast has watched this pattern play out across the wider city for years, and the fear that a 1922 building on a landmark corner would get demolished for new construction was not idle.
By June, the outcome flipped. Real estate investor Cullen Mahoney, who had held the contract on the property, brought in Ferguson and John John Delladonna, owner of Shrimpy's Waterfront in St. Pete Beach, as partners. Instead of closing the restaurant to redevelop the land, the group decided to keep operating it. St Pete Rising reported the sale itself would still close on schedule in August, but the business inside would not.
St. Pete Already Ran This Play Once
Ferguson was direct about where the idea came from. He said he and his partners took inspiration from Seed & Feed Hospitality Group's 2023 acquisition of El Cap, the vintage neighborhood bar and hamburger grill on 4th Street North, when they were deciding what to do with the Chattaway.
That precedent is worth sitting with, because it tells you something about how St. Petersburg actually preserves its old restaurants in 2026. It is not landmark designation or a preservation nonprofit stepping in. It is competing restaurant owners, people who already run their own established spots elsewhere in Pinellas County, recognizing that a beloved address has brand equity worth more as a going concern than as a teardown. Ferguson runs a sports bar. Delladonna runs a seafood restaurant on the beach. Neither needed the Chattaway. Both decided it was worth having anyway, the same calculation Seed & Feed made with El Cap three years earlier.
What Actually Changes This Fall
The partners take over ownership when the sale closes this month, and Ferguson said the group expects to throw a grand opening party in September. Here is what residents can expect on either side of that date, based on what the new owners have said publicly:
- Staying: the layout, including the quirky outdoor garden patio, the pink-and-green paint job, and the photographs stuck under polyurethane on the bar. Mahoney said the goal is simple: "we're keeping it what it is because that's what makes it important to St. Pete."
- Likely gone: the English tea room, the interior space where Frers, known to regulars as Lady Chattaway, once hosted afternoon tea parties. Ferguson has said it will probably not survive the transition.
- New: a liquor license, which the restaurant has not held before, and a roof over the patio to keep sun and rain off diners. Ferguson also mentioned tightening day-to-day operations, including installing a point-of-sale system.
None of this is a full remodel. It reads more like a restaurant getting its plumbing modernized while the furniture stays exactly where it has always been.
The Parking Lot Is Neighborhood Infrastructure Too
Here is the part of the story that the wider coverage of the sale has mostly skipped, and it is the reason this matters beyond the menu. The Chattaway's shaded parking lot is not just where regulars park before ordering a burger. It is where the Old Southeast Neighborhood Association holds its annual Plant Swap and Art Raffle every April, when neighbors bring cuttings, extra seedlings, and garden tools to trade in the lot at 358 22nd Avenue South. If the property had been sold for redevelopment, the neighborhood would have lost that gathering space along with the restaurant.
The timing lines up with two other things that make Old Southeast what it is. The neighborhood carries an official Artist Enclave designation, and the OSE Artist Enclave holds its annual Studio Tour every October, when resident artists open their home studios to visitors along a mapped route. And a few blocks east, Lassing Park, a 12.5-acre bayfront green space donated to the city in 1924 by Judge Robert B. Lassing, anchors the neighborhood's eastern edge with a shoreline that has been the subject of a multi-year living shoreline restoration led by Tampa Bay Watch and the city's parks department, work that neighbors have turned out for at cleanup events organized through the Old Southeast Neighborhood Association.
What to Watch For
If you live in Old Southeast, the practical takeaway is simple. The sale finalizes this month. A grand opening party is expected in September. The burger, the patio, and the paint job will be there. The tea room probably will not. And when the Plant Swap rolls around again next April, it will very likely still be in that same shaded lot, because three local restaurant owners decided a townhouse conversion was not the ending this corner deserved.
Old Southeast has always run on a short list of institutions that outlast individual owners: the park, the artist studios, and now, again, the restaurant on the corner. Watching how a neighborhood chooses to save what it already has tells you as much about the place as anything a listing ever could.
If you're curious about what else is shifting in Old Southeast, exploring local St. Petersburg homes for sale, or planning a relocation to St. Pete, Plotkin Homes knows this stretch of St. Petersburg block by block. Contact us if you'd like a conversation about the neighborhood, no matter what stage of the process you're in.
