"The King approves this message." That was the sign-off on a Facebook post from The Chattaway in March, breaking the news that the 75-year-old restaurant at the corner of 4th Street South and 22nd Avenue South had been sold. No details, just a promise to share more later and an invitation to book one last English afternoon tea before the doors closed for good.
For a few months this spring, Old Southeast thought it was losing something it had stopped noticing it depended on.
What the sale actually threatened
The building at 358 22nd Avenue South goes back to the early 1920s, when a wooden structure went up on a pie-shaped corner lot and housed Four Corners Grocery, a soda-and-candy counter with a single gas pump out front selling fuel at 22 cents a gallon. The restaurant as most residents know it opened in 1951, when Jillian Frers, an Englishwoman who'd relocated to Florida, took it over. She became full owner after her husband Everett Lund died in 2002, and by then she'd already turned one of the interior rooms into a proper tea room, complete with china and unlimited English tea service by reservation. Her son Greg Kitto has tended bar there for roughly 40 years. Her grandchildren grew up working the counter.
When word got out in March that the property was under contract, the plan on the table was simple: the family would sell, the restaurant would close by mid-July, and ownership would transfer to a new buyer by early August. That buyer was Cullen Mahoney, a real estate investor with a local development firm called Sodus Development. Mahoney told the Tampa Bay Times he was still figuring out whether the space could be preserved at all.
Mark Ferguson, who owns Ferg's Sports Bar & Grill and grew up in St. Petersburg, said what a lot of neighbors were quietly thinking.
"I was afraid somebody was going to buy it and turn it into townhouses."
That fear was not abstract. A corner lot this size, this close to downtown, is exactly the kind of site that stops being a restaurant in someone's spreadsheet and starts being a site plan.
Who actually bought it, and why that changes the outcome
By June, the story had a different ending. Mahoney brought on two partners: Ferguson, and John John Delladonna, who owns Shrimpy's Waterfront in St. Pete Beach. All three are St. Pete restaurant and real estate people, not outside buyers, and Mahoney lives in the neighborhood himself. The sale itself stayed on track, but the plan shifted from redevelopment to continuity.
"We're going to make exactly what they're doing better," Mahoney said. "The intention is to take the vibe, take the existing infrastructure and make it sustainable."
Some of what's changing is visible from the parking lot. Delladonna's seafood background means the menu is expected to lean further into that direction. The group is pursuing a liquor license, something the restaurant has operated without for decades. They're installing a point-of-sale system, a small but telling detail about how informally the place has run. Ferguson has also floated live music and small vendor markets, the kind of programming he already runs at Ferg's.
Some of what's staying is just as specific. The pink-and-green paint job survives. So does the outdoor seating area, including the 44 clawfoot bathtubs used as flower planters that regulars associate with the place as much as the burgers. What likely doesn't survive is the tea room itself, the one detail that drew the most pushback in local comment threads after the sale went public.
Here's the shorthand version of what changes and what holds:
| Staying | Changing |
|---|---|
| Pink-and-green exterior | Point-of-sale system (new) |
| Clawfoot bathtub planters and patio layout | Liquor license (in progress) |
| Live music tradition | Expanded seafood menu |
| The Chattaburger and core menu identity | English tea room service |
Ferguson has said staffing decisions haven't been finalized, and the plan is to keep the restaurant operating without interruption through the transition rather than closing for a full remodel.
The parking lot that runs the neighborhood's calendar
Here's the part that outside coverage of the sale mostly missed: this parking lot isn't just where people park to eat lunch. It's the operational hub for two of Old Southeast's defining annual traditions, and both only work because a private business has quietly hosted them for years.
Old Southeast is one of just two neighborhoods in St. Petersburg with an Artist Enclave designation, granted by the city in 2014 after residents voted for it the year before. Along with Historic Kenwood, it's the only place in the city where residents can legally use their homes as studios, galleries, and instructional spaces. The Old Southeast Neighborhood Association runs an annual Studio Tour to show that off, a free, self-guided walk through more than a dozen artists' home studios, spanning painters, potters, printmakers, sculptors, and wood turners. The way it's always worked: you show up at The Chattaway's parking lot, grab a map from the information tent, and start walking.
Every April, that same lot hosts the Plant Swap and Art Raffle, where neighbors bring plants and cuttings to trade under the shade of the lot's trees. It's a small, informal event, but it's been reliable enough that residents plan their spring yard-cutting schedule around it.
Neither event is officially tied to the restaurant's ownership. OSNA runs the programming, not The Chattaway. But when a business has hosted your neighborhood's info tent and plant trade for years without ever charging for the privilege, its for-sale sign becomes a bigger deal than a menu change. If the parking lot had become three or four townhome units, the Studio Tour and the Plant Swap wouldn't have disappeared outright, but they'd have needed a new anchor point, and neither event has an obvious backup location with the same walkability, shade, and name recognition.
That's the part of this story worth sitting with. Old Southeast's civic infrastructure isn't concentrated in a park or a rec center. Some of it runs through the goodwill of one small business owner, and this spring showed how thin that arrangement actually is until it gets tested.
What to watch for right now
The timeline has already slipped once. Back in June, the partners told Tampa Bay Beacons they expected to close on the property in August and throw a grand opening party in September. By mid-August, the Tampa Bay Times was still reporting the sale as pending, with completion pushed to this month, and Frers sending a farewell letter to the paper as the deal neared its finish. As of this writing, no confirmed reopening date has gone public. If you've driven past recently and noticed unfamiliar vehicles in the lot or work happening near the patio, that's the ownership transition playing out in real time, not a second closure.
Practically, that means the Studio Tour and Plant Swap traditions should have a home again once the dust settles, assuming the new ownership group keeps the lot available the way the family did. Neither OSNA nor the new owners have announced any change to that arrangement, and Ferguson has been explicit that community access is part of the point.
If you want to track OSNA's own calendar for updated Studio Tour and Plant Swap dates as they're confirmed, their events page is the most current source, more current than any news coverage of the sale itself.
None of this changes anything about property values or moving plans, and that's the point. It's a story about whether a 75-year-old burger stand keeps functioning as the load-bearing wall under two of Old Southeast's actual traditions, not about square footage or comps. But if you live here, it's worth knowing that the answer, for now, looks like yes.
If you're curious about the rest of what makes Old Southeast tick day to day, from Lassing Park's sunrise views to Bayboro Harbor, that ongoing profile lives on our Old Southeast neighborhood page.
Whenever you're ready to talk pricing, timing, or what your own Old Southeast home is worth in today's market, Marsh Bilby is here with the same appraiser's precision he brings to every valuation. Get a Free Home Valuation and start the conversation with real numbers, not guesses.
