"Restaurants and their structure are kind of breaking even, losing a little bit of money." That's Jonathan Bucklew, the operator behind Depot 303, describing the state of Mulberry's first food hall as it crosses its one-year mark this summer. It is not the line you'd expect from the man running the city's flagship redevelopment project. It's also the most honest thing anyone has said publicly about downtown Mulberry in the last twelve months, and it tells you more about what's actually happening here than any "hot new spot" write-up will.

Depot 303 opened in July 2025 after a soft opening that April. Thirteen months later, weekend foot traffic is strong enough that regulars know the QR code ordering system by heart and the Tuesday night bingo and trivia crowd shows up like clockwork. Weekday lunch is a different story. Some of the vendors are still working out whether a food hall built for destination traffic can also carry the slower midweek rhythm of a town of Mulberry's size. That gap between weekend energy and weekday math isn't a failure. It's the actual shape of what a first year looks like when a city, not a private developer, is the one absorbing the risk.

The City Bought a Furniture Warehouse. Then It Waited.

The building at 303 NW 1st Avenue used to be a Badcock Home Furnishings store. Mulberry bought it in 2022 for $75,000 and spent the next three years turning it into a seven-stall food hall with a full bar, a screened patio, and seating for close to 280 people. The city didn't run it themselves. They brought in Bucklew, who already had a working model up in downtown Lakeland at The Joinery, and asked him to build something similar with its own identity.

What showed up wasn't a copy-paste. Tilaw Asian Fusion is run by Jun and Cherish Dobrea, who built their following through the catering company Pinoy Cravings before opening their first storefront inside Depot 303, serving lumpia, chicken adobo, and a calamansi refresher you won't find at the chain restaurants out on Highway 60. Fat Maggie's, known for smash burgers and candy bacon mac and cheese, moved over from Lakeland's Dixieland neighborhood. Ling's Dumplings runs a second location here, the first being inside Tampa's Armature Works food hall. Pizza Odyssey, which started as a stall inside the Lake Morton Market and Deli across from the Lakeland Public Library, opened its second stone-fired pizza operation in Mulberry because, as owner Heath Hester put it, he already had customers driving up from Mulberry just to get his pizza in Lakeland. Nashville hot chicken concept King of the Coop and Italian sandwich shop Bottega Porchetta rounded out the roster, with a birria concept called Birria Lab's still working through the pipeline to fill the last stall.

Mayor George Hatch has framed the slow build as expected, not concerning. "The area is growing," he said, pointing to Depot 303 as one piece of a longer play rather than the whole story.

Five Years Into the Gem, the City Is Still Building It

If Depot 303 is a year old, the Gem Theater is on a much longer clock, and it's still not finished growing. The building opened in 1947 as a 450-seat movie house, closed in 1957, and spent the next several decades as a union hall for chemical workers before sitting vacant. The city bought it in 2020 and reopened it in 2021 as a performing arts and film venue. Five years later, in 2026, Mulberry is still adding to it. This year's renovations brought new dressing rooms, a larger green room, an expanded stage, upgraded lighting, and more backstage space, all because the productions themselves had outgrown the room they started in.

Chelsea Young, Mulberry's director of culture and programming, has spent the last few years convincing residents the Gem could host something worth taking seriously. Rory Lawrence, an actor and producer who grew up in Mulberry and was introduced to theater at Mulberry High School just up the hill, recently brought one of his own productions to the stage. "I think the Gem literally is a hidden gem," he said.

That mix of professional polish and hometown ownership shows up in the calendar. The volunteer-run Missing Piece Theatre Company held auditions at the Gem in June for its fall production of Our Town, with performances set for October 10, 11, and 17 at 7:30pm and October 12, 18, and 19 at 2pm. Through the summer, the theater's recurring series kept the screen busy too: $2 Tuesdays brought family films at kid-friendly prices, and the America at the Movies series ran classics like Apollo 13, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and a screening of Hamilton, each ticketed at $5 with outside snacks welcome.

Same Playbook, Different Building

Here's the pattern worth noticing if you live in Mulberry and have watched both projects unfold at ground level. Neither Depot 303 nor the Gem Theater arrived as a finished product. Both are city-owned, both are funded through Mulberry's Community Redevelopment Agency, and both are still being built out years after their public debut. The food hall didn't open with all its vendors locked in. The theater didn't reopen with the stage capacity it has today. City leaders keep describing the same tension: how to keep investing in downtown without turning Mulberry into something it isn't.

That tension is already producing effects outside the two flagship buildings. At Greater Hope Church of Mulberry, plans are underway to break ground on a larger sanctuary. Associate pastor Tim Brown said the new space would let the congregation hold three to four times its current size. That's not a coincidence tied to any single project. It's what happens when a small downtown starts absorbing steady foot traffic and new residents at the same time, and existing institutions start planning for a bigger version of themselves.

If you're used to redevelopment stories that peak at a ribbon-cutting and fade from there, downtown Mulberry is doing the opposite. The interesting part isn't the grand opening. It's that both projects are still visibly under construction, physically and financially, well past the point where a press release would call them done.

Your Next Few Weekends Downtown

If you want to see the pattern for yourself, here's where to start:

• Tuesday nights at Depot 303: bingo and trivia run weekly, and it's the easiest way to catch the food hall at its most local, not its most crowded.
• Depot 303's rotating vendor lineup: Birria Lab's is still working its way toward opening, so keep an eye out for when the seventh stall finally goes live.
• The Gem Theater's fall calendar: Our Town runs October 10 through 19, and it's worth checking the Gem's site closer to the date for ticket details.
• The Gem's recurring screening series: America at the Movies and $2 Tuesdays return in rotation, so it's worth checking the theater's calendar rather than assuming a fixed monthly date.
• Downtown's holiday programming: Mulberry typically closes out the year with a Christmas parade and a Christmas Village at Spence Park, so watch the city's calendar as December gets closer.

None of this requires you to be shopping for a house or thinking about a move. It's simply what's true about downtown Mulberry right now, told with the names attached instead of smoothed into a generic "things are happening" summary.

Team Hubbert keeps this close a habit because it's the same way we track every Polk County community we work in, block by block, project by project, not just median price by median price. If you're curious what any of this growth means for what your home is worth today, our team can put together a free instant home valuation whenever you're ready to look.