Stillwaters Tavern Filled the Hub's Last Corner, and Land O' Lakes Split Into Two Different Saturday Nights

You circle the lot at The Hub at Bexley for the third time, and now you're just looking for any open spot within walking distance of the entrance. A birthday dinner reservation is in twelve minutes. The lot that used to have a few open rows even on a Friday night now reads like a mall parking lot in December. Somewhere behind you, another car is doing the same slow loop.

This isn't a fluke night. It's what happens when a shopping center built for one destination restaurant suddenly has two.

The Corner That Used to Have One Restaurant

The Hub at Bexley opened its doors as a walkable retail and dining node on State Road 54, anchored from day one by BellaBrava, the Italian trattoria that built its reputation on Beach Drive in St. Petersburg before bringing Woodstone-oven pizzas and house-made pasta up to Pasco County. For years, BellaBrava was the reason people made the trip to that corner of Bexley. It had the parking to match, room to spare even on a busy weekend.

That changed in early June 2026, when Stillwaters Tavern opened its second location at 16729 Focus Loop, just steps from BellaBrava. Both restaurants belong to the same Tampa Bay hospitality group, 2BHospitality, founded by Thomas Sanborn, Brandyce Craig and Robert Sanderson. Stillwaters brings its own draw: roughly twenty beers on tap, a full bar, house-made sausages and chicken schnitzel, plus the kind of scratch kitchen menu that's kept its original downtown St. Petersburg location busy for nearly a decade. It serves lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, which means it's competing for the exact same Saturday evening crowd BellaBrava used to have mostly to itself.

Two restaurants from the same ownership group, same shopping center, same parking lot. It's a smart bet on foot traffic. It's also the reason your Saturday night now starts with a lap around the building before you even sit down.

What the Regulars Are Actually Saying

You don't have to take a stranger's word for how this feels on a Saturday night. One diner left a review on OpenTable after a recent visit to BellaBrava that captures the shift better than any press release could:

"Food and service are all excellent. However, I would recommend going on a weeknight. The 2026 opening of another large restaurant in the same center has turned Saturday evening parking into a real nightmare. We cruised the lot for 10 minutes along with numerous other cars. Finally, we had parking karma near the Bella Brava end of the parking lot. Handicapped parking is totally inadequate for the number of cars using the facility."

BellaBrava's own reply to that review acknowledged the problem directly, thanking the guest for the weeknight suggestion and noting the changes in parking tied to the new restaurant. That's not spin. That's a restaurant owned by the same company that opened the second location, admitting the math changed.

The takeaway for anyone who already lives here isn't complicated: the Hub got better in exactly the way that also made it more crowded. Two strong, independently reviewed restaurants sitting fifty feet apart is a genuinely good problem to have as a neighborhood. It's just not a problem you solve by showing up at 7:30 on a Saturday and hoping.

The Lake Was Already Working

Here's the part of the story that gets missed if you only pay attention to what's new. While the Hub was adding its second restaurant, Land O' Lakes already had a different kind of Saturday night sitting quietly on the other side of town, and it never needed a parking strategy to begin with.

In The Loop Brewing sits at 3338 Land O Lakes Blvd, directly on Lake Padgett, in a building locals describe as historic rather than newly built. It's open Wednesday and Thursday from 4pm to 10pm, Friday and Saturday from noon to 11pm, and Sunday from noon to 8pm, closed Monday and Tuesday. The draw here was never a single anchor restaurant. It's the beer garden itself: cornhole, oversized Jenga, dog-friendly outdoor seating, food trucks that rotate through, and a view of the lake that regulars mention more often than any specific pour. It's the kind of place where you can watch for wildlife along the shoreline while you wait for your food truck order, and where nobody's circling for a parking spot because the whole point of the visit is to slow down once you get there.

The Hub getting busier hasn't made In The Loop Brewing busier by association. If anything, it's made the contrast sharper. One is a reservation-driven dinner scene competing for the same tables on the same night. The other runs on its own calendar, and that calendar is the real reason it works as a release valve for anyone who'd rather skip the lap around the Hub's lot entirely.

What's Actually on the Lake This Month

That calendar isn't hypothetical. In The Loop Brewing has a running slate of programming through the fall that gives residents a reason to show up on a specific night, not just "whenever":

• September 17 — Plant Bingo, 7pm, a recurring evening event for the brewery's regulars
• September 19 — Lakeside Market, 6pm to 10pm, a monthly night market with local vendors, craft beer and the lakeside setting as the main attraction
• September 20 — Goat Yoga Tampa, 10am, hosted right at the brewery
• October 17 — Lakeside Market: Spooky Edition, the fall-themed installment of the same monthly market

None of this requires a reservation twelve minutes out or a plan for where you'll park if the lot fills up. You show up, you find a spot, and the evening happens on the brewery's own schedule. When Looptoberfest returns each fall, it's the same story: an established, single-location event built around the lake rather than around table turnover.

Two Reservations, One Zip Code

Here's the actual shift worth understanding if you live in Land O' Lakes right now. This neighborhood didn't get one new hot spot this year. It effectively split into two distinct kinds of Saturday night, and they don't compete with each other the way you'd expect.

The Hub at Bexley is now a dinner-reservation neighborhood: two strong restaurants from the same ownership group, a menu worth planning around, and a parking lot that requires you to show up early or accept the lap around the building. That's a trade a lot of people are happy to make for schnitzel and twenty beers on tap, or for BellaBrava's short rib ragu, but it's a trade, not a given.

In The Loop Brewing is still the other option: no reservation required, a calendar of recurring events that gives you a reason to go on a specific Thursday or Saturday, and a lake view that doesn't get more crowded just because a restaurant two miles away added a second kitchen.

If you already live in Land O' Lakes, the practical result is that you now have a genuine choice most Saturdays, one polished and reservation-worthy, one lakeside and calendar-driven, both inside the same few square miles. That's not a small thing for a neighborhood. It's the kind of texture that takes years to build and that a lot of newer Tampa Bay suburbs still don't have.

For more on what's happening around this stretch of Pasco County, our Land O' Lakes neighborhood page and our running list of things to do get updated as new spots open and old favorites change their hours.

Whether you're already circling the Hub's parking lot on a Saturday or you're the one who's found the lake instead, that's the kind of local knowledge NuVista Real Estate Group likes to keep close. If you're ever curious what a home near either scene is actually worth, or you just want to talk through what's changing in this corner of Land O' Lakes, reach out and Start Your Home Journey with people who already know which lot fills up first.