If you live on the islands, you already know the Circle is busy again. What you might not have registered is that the tenant list is quietly different from the one you memorized before Helene and Milton. Some familiar names are back under new signage. Some new names took the addresses of institutions you assumed were permanent. And a July vote at City Hall just committed roughly $8 million to burying the utility lines that frame every one of these storefronts.
Taken together, this isn't a reopening. It's a rearrangement. Here is what actually changed while you were watching the sand come back.
The reopenings that aren't quite reopenings
Le Colonne was, for a generation of Lido and St. Armands residents, the Italian restaurant. It closed after the 2024 storms. What reopened the first week of January at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents is not Le Colonne. It's Nōnnō Umberto, an Italian seafood and steakhouse at the same address, renamed by Simone Salustri and Amber Mayner to honor Simone's father Umberto Salustri, who opened the original. The rebrand looked ceremonial from the sidewalk. It was not. Staff served more than 250 people on the first night, growing to 800 people over the course of the first week, according to co-owner Amber Mayner. That is a resident number, not a snowbird number. January's snowbirds hadn't fully landed yet.
The Tiki Bar is the other one worth understanding correctly. The Lido Key Tiki Bar is open, weather permitting, from 11 a.m. to half an hour before sunset every day at 1234 Benjamin Franklin Drive, back on the Ritz-Carlton Members Beach Club property after the storms took it out. General Manager Cordoba framed the return this way:
"The Tiki Bar was not only an institution. We discovered after we lost it how much of a symbol it was for the locals. It was supposed to be 70 years old in 2027."
The distinction matters for how you plan a Tuesday evening. The renovated bar touts itself as the only fully on-the-beach bar in Sarasota County, and the sunset cutoff is a firm operating decision, not a suggestion. Get there by 6:30 in August or don't bother.
Meanwhile, the block at 28 S. Boulevard of the Presidents is doing something the Circle hasn't done in years: it's fully leased with three tenants none of whom existed there before the storms. Chocolate Emporium joined Acadia Jewels Fine Jewelry & Design, which opened Jan. 1 in a 1,390-square-foot space, and Le Shop, a coffee shop, wine bar and market that opened in November in a 1,385-square-foot space. The property was severely damaged due to flooding and the owners have replaced the drywall up to four feet and installed new electric and HVAC systems that were placed on an elevated platform. Read that last sentence twice. The building didn't just get new tenants. It got engineered for the next storm before the tenants signed.
A working map of what's open, what's coming, and what left
| Address | Who's there now | What was there before |
|---|---|---|
| 22 S. Blvd of the Presidents | Nōnnō Umberto (Jan 2026) | Le Colonne |
| 28A S. Blvd of the Presidents | Chocolate Emporium (June 2026) | Storm-damaged retail |
| 28 S. Blvd of the Presidents | Acadia Jewels, Le Shop | Storm-damaged retail |
| 7 N. Blvd of the Presidents | St. Armands Jewelers (2026) | Jewelry by Cole |
| 300 John Ringling Blvd | Pinchers (opening October 2026) | Tommy Bahama |
| 465 John Ringling Blvd | Tommy Bahama (relocated) | Shore |
| 1234 Benjamin Franklin Dr | Lido Key Tiki Bar (reopened June 2026) | Prior Tiki Bar structure |
The St. Armands Jewelers change at 7 N. Boulevard of the Presidents is a full ownership transition from Jewelry by Cole. The closed shop's namesake master goldsmith, Stephen Cole Powell, began handcrafting fine jewelry in 1974. New owner Mia Tohar Eylon recently announced a soft opening of the new store. If you're used to walking in and asking for Stephen, you now walk in and ask for Mia.
The October signal
The single most useful piece of information for a Lido or St. Armands resident right now is the Pinchers timeline. Pinchers signed a lease for more than 8,000 square feet at 300 John Ringling Blvd. in Sarasota, where it plans to begin serving customers this fall. "We are shooting to be open in October," Kevin Rooney, vice president of marketing and advertising for Phelan Family Brands, told the Business Observer. The location is the old Tommy Bahama, which is now three blocks up the Circle in what used to be Shore.
The St. Armands restaurant will have in the "neighborhood" of 75 to 100 employees, according to Rooney, with around 200 seats. A 200-seat restaurant is a specific bet on year-round volume, not a seasonal outpost. Pinchers has 10 restaurants along the Gulf Coast, from Naples to Wesley Chapel. The closest to St. Armands are in Lakewood Ranch and Venice, about 14 and 20 miles away, respectively. If you've driven to the Lakewood Ranch location for a Sunday crab, you won't be driving anymore after October.
Shore, the restaurant Tommy Bahama displaced from 465, is coming back too, but not this year. Shore closed in 2024 after more than 15 years on the circle following significant damage during Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The business saw several feet of saltwater intrusion during both storms. If all goes as planned with city approvals, Shore anticipates a fall 2027 opening for the café and retail shop followed by the restaurant a few months later. Plan accordingly. Owner Tom Leonard's return is a two-stage project, and the first stage is more than a year out.
Standing dates worth putting on the fridge
The Circle's calendar year is now visible enough to plan around again. If you host guests, these are the fixed points:
- Third Thursdays on St. Armands — monthly, all-day programming coordinated by the St. Armands Circle Association
- Corvettes on the Circle — May 2, 2026, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., its 28th anniversary
- St. Armands Craft Festival & Sidewalk Sale — June 6 to 7, 2026
- Exotic Cars on the Circle — September 5, 2026
- St. Armands Art Festival & Craft Marketplace — September 12 to 13, 2026
- Fall Fine Art Festival — November 14 to 15, 2026
The free Bay Runner open-air trolley offers daily service between downtown and Lido Key and St. Armands Circle, which is the resident cheat code for event days when parking around the Circle turns hostile. If you live on Lido and are hosting people staying downtown, tell them to skip the Uber and use the trolley in both directions.
The vote that made all of this permanent
Here is the sentence you may have missed while you were watching for reopenings. At its July 20 meeting, the Sarasota City Commission voted unanimously to launch a program to rip out every overhead electric and communications line from St. Armands Circle to the far reaches of Lido Key and bury the entire system underground, financed by the property owners who would benefit from it. Commissioners approved a $7.95 million professional services agreement with Utility Consultants of Florida, Inc., and then adopted Resolution 26R-3408, authorizing an $8 million tax-exempt line of credit with Regions Capital Advantage to front the money until special assessments can repay it.
The catch, and it is not small: Sarasota's initial intent is a single, holistic barrier-island assessment, partly because government properties on City Island complicate a piecemeal approach, though staff said the consultant will evaluate splitting the districts. Commissioners pushed to keep that option open so that if, say, Lido votes yes and St. Armands votes no, the city could proceed with one and prorate its recovery of the upfront costs. If you own on the barrier, stakeholder engagement is required to begin the moment the agreement is executed, and over the summer and fall the consultant will refine district boundaries, build planning-level cost estimates and stand up the program website with parcel-by-parcel assessment lookup. By the winter of 2026-27, staff expects to return to the commission with detailed parcel-level assessment ranges. The number on your parcel is coming this winter. It is not hypothetical.
Two other infrastructure line items belong on your radar. Lido Key beach's shoreline renourishment project is underway, with hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand dredged from New Pass and placed on the beach. The renourishment will fill the southern half of Lido Key, targeting areas that have seen up to 90 feet of shoreline degradation, and after the renourishment and a summer break, dune construction will take place beginning in the fall and continue through early 2027. Separately, FDOT is providing up to $600,037 for streetlight repair with a local match of $108,426. The project includes replacement of lamp heads, lighting arms, wiring harnesses, solar panels, controllers, batteries and other related equipment damaged during hurricanes Helene and Milton along John Ringling Boulevard and Benjamin Franklin Drive. The dark stretch of Ben Franklin Drive on your evening drive home is on a specific fix-it list.
What the retail map is really telling you
Here is the thesis one more time in a single sentence: the Circle isn't reopening as a copy of itself, and the people who committed capital to it since January picked spots that assume year-round island residents, not seasonal foot traffic. A 200-seat Gulf Coast seafood chain in the old Tommy Bahama footprint. A three-tenant retail building with HVAC on an elevated platform. A jewelry succession that kept the workshop but changed the family name over the door. A tiki bar with a 70-year backstory reopening one summer early. Underneath all of it, an $8 million line of credit that presumes the barrier islands will still be worth the buried wire in ten years.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for the value of the roof you already own on Lido, St. Armands, or Bird Key, the people best positioned to answer are the ones who have been walking these blocks with clients through the whole rebuild. Reach out to Toni Schemmel and Mette Milland at Michael Saunders & Company's Main Street office when you'd like a quiet conversation about how the post-storm map is repricing your address.
