If you drove past the old Dick's Sporting Goods box at Brandon Exchange sometime this year and wondered why a British discount fashion chain was suddenly measuring the windows, you weren't imagining things. Primark confirmed it's opening its first Tampa Bay location in that exact spot, and the timing only makes sense once you know what else has been happening on that property.
Because here's the part that doesn't show up in a quick drive-by: Brandon Exchange already has a Dick's. A big one. Dick's House of Sport occupies more than 125,000 square feet at the mall, complete with sport cages, a climbing wall, and outdoor field space. That store isn't going anywhere. The Dick's Sporting Goods box Primark is moving into is a separate, older location, the traditional-format store that became redundant once the retailer built its flagship experience elsewhere on the same property. Primark didn't create a vacancy. Dick's did, by outgrowing its own old shoes.
The Retail Sorting Nobody Announces
This matters because it explains something that would otherwise look random: two very different retailers landed in Brandon in the same year, and neither one waited for Tampa proper to get its own store first.
Primark's national announcements list Brandon Exchange alongside Vineland Premium Outlets in Orlando as the chain's next two Florida openings, following existing stores in Sunrise and at The Florida Mall. Neither Tampa nor St. Petersburg has one yet. Pop Mart, the collectibles brand behind the Labubu craze, is opening at 424 Brandon Town Center Drive, and a local writeup on the announcement noted that until now, the nearest Pop Mart to Tampa was in Orlando. Brandon becomes the closer option for anyone in Hillsborough County who doesn't want to cross the bay for a Blind Box.
None of that happens by accident. It happens because a 1.1 million square foot property with Dillard's and a 146,000 square foot Macy's already anchoring it has enough built-in foot traffic to make national chains skip the slower rollout and open here directly. Brandon Exchange ranks in Florida's top 1% for mall traffic, according to property manager NADG, and that kind of number is exactly what gets a retailer's regional real estate team to stop treating Brandon as an afterthought behind Tampa and Orlando.
What's Actually Landing, and Where
The tenant shuffle goes beyond the two headline names. Cavender's Boot City is bringing Western wear, boots, and brands like Ariat and Wrangler into the mix. Designers Closet is arriving near Dick's House of Sport with a curated selection of trend-forward apparel. Here's how the pieces line up against what was already there:
| Retailer | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Primark | Opening in 2026 | First Tampa Bay location, in the former Dick's Sporting Goods box |
| Pop Mart | Opening soon | 424 Brandon Town Center Drive, closer to Tampa than the Orlando store |
| Cavender's Boot City | Coming | Western wear, boots, work apparel |
| Designers Closet | Arriving this summer | Located near Dick's House of Sport |
| Ben's Pizza | Now open | New York style, inside The Eatery |
| True Religion | Now open | Denim and streetwear |
That table alone tells you the mall isn't backfilling empty pads with whatever will sign a lease. It's swapping in specialty and experience-driven retail for the categories that used to be generic mall filler.
The Part That Isn't a Store at All
The more interesting money is going somewhere you can't buy anything. Brandon Exchange is in the middle of redesigning its central courtyard and plaza, adding indoor and outdoor gathering space that has nothing to do with square footage for lease. That's a deliberate bet that people will stick around longer if there's somewhere to sit that isn't a food court bench.
You can already see pieces of that bet paying off if you've been by lately. Sleep Number reopened in a refreshed space. Journeys came back after a full renovation. OFFLINE by Aerie moved in with an expanded activewear lineup. None of those are new concepts to Tampa Bay shoppers, but a refreshed, renovated version of a store you already knew signals the same thing as a brand-new tenant: the property is spending money on itself, not just waiting for leases to expire.
The mall's own amenities point the same direction. Stroller rentals, family lounges, and curbside-to-go pickup near the Food Court and Restaurant Courtyard aren't the kind of details a shopping center adds if it expects to lose its crowd to a strip mall down Bloomingdale Avenue. They're the kind of details you add when you're trying to keep people there for three hours instead of forty-five minutes.
One Date Worth Circling
If you need an actual reason to go check any of this out in person, mark August 29. Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is doing a public signing at Brandon Exchange that day starting at 2 p.m. It's the kind of event that pulls people in who weren't planning to shop at all, and once they're there, they're standing thirty feet from a Primark storefront and a Pop Mart line that weren't part of this mall a year ago.
None of this changes what Brandon Exchange has always been for most of the neighborhood: the mall you already default to for a Saturday errand run, a birthday gift, or dinner at the Cheesecake Factory before a movie. What's changed is the pace. A property that spent the better part of a decade feeling settled is now cycling through tenants and rebuilding its own common areas fast enough that a visit in August looks different from one in January.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks these things because you like knowing your neighborhood before anyone else does, that instinct is worth something. The same local curiosity that clocks a Primark sign before it's official is exactly what makes someone a useful person to ask when a friend says they're thinking about buying or selling nearby. If that's ever you, our team at Engel & Völkers Lakeland spends as much time tracking Brandon's retail rotation as we do its market. When you're ready for the real estate side of that conversation, start with a Get a Free Home Valuation and we'll take it from there.
