CorePower Yoga opens first Tampa Bay studio in St. Petersburg’s EDGE District

The EDGE District is getting a new wellness tenant in one of its oldest storefronts. CorePower Yoga has signed a lease at 965 Central Avenue, a vacant 4,200-square-foot former bank building that is set to become the company’s first Tampa Bay studio and one more sign that Central Avenue keeps trading in old retail uses for fitness and dining.

The address carries real neighborhood weight. Built in 1926, the one-story property was home to Flagship Bank until the branch closed and the bank moved its St. Petersburg accounts to 3303 4th Street N., Suite 100. The building sits in a retail block that 90Ten bought for $8.5 million, part of a wider run of Central Avenue properties changing hands in the EDGE District. That corridor runs along Central Avenue between 9th Street, also known as MLK, and 16th Street, a stretch that has become one of St. Petersburg’s most visible zones for walkable commerce.

For St. Pete yogis, the arrival matters because CorePower is not a small regional outpost. The Denver-based company says it has 220-plus locations and bills itself as the largest yoga studio brand in the United States. Its class lineup is broad, and it also runs yoga teacher training certification and accelerated programs online and in studio, which means the new location could become both a practice space and a training pipeline for future instructors.

The company’s origin story also helps explain its staying power. CorePower was founded in 2002 by Trevor Tice after a climbing accident led him to yoga for rehabilitation. Today, Niki Leondakis is listed as chief executive officer on the brand’s official team page, giving the company a hospitality-minded leader with more than 30 years of experience. That combination of national scale and teacher-training infrastructure could make the St. Petersburg studio more than a drop-in exercise space once it opens.

The opening is expected in 2027, so the EDGE District will have time to absorb the shift. Still, the news signals a bigger change for local practitioners: more class choices, more competition for independent studios, and another reason for the neighborhood’s dining, fitness, and specialty corridor to keep thickening around a former bank that is about to become a yoga address.