Anyone who has walked the Promenade between the Van Wezel and the old Chidsey Library this summer has hit the same stretch of orange fencing. The posted signs send you around it, past the Blue Pagoda, out toward Tamiami Trail. It is easy to read that detour as just another downtown construction inconvenience, the kind every growing city eventually absorbs and forgets. But what is going up behind that fence carries a name that predates the park itself by almost sixty years, and the story behind it says more about how this neighborhood thinks about itself than any ribbon cutting will.
The square getting its old name back
The feature under construction is the Town Square, the shaded gathering and performance space the Bay Park Conservancy has been building at the midpoint of the Promenade since work on the Cultural District began. When it opens this October, the Conservancy will not be introducing a new name for it. Chief Operating Officer Diana Shaheen told the Sarasota City Commission in May that the space will instead be called The Plaza, reviving a designation that goes back to April 1964, when then-Mayor Herschel Mayo dedicated that same patch of ground as Plaza de Santo Domingo in recognition of Sarasota's sister-city relationship with Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
That detail did not come from a park brochure. It surfaced during a City Commission discussion about Phase 3 funding, the kind of civic housekeeping that rarely gets promoted alongside a groundbreaking. But it means the space downtown residents have been detouring around all summer is not a blank slate waiting for a marketing name. It is a name coming back to ground that already carried it, decades before the fencing, the Promenade, or the 53-acre master plan existed.
"Right now it sure looks like we can complete the park by end of 2029," AG Lafley, the Bay Park Conservancy's founding CEO, said in June, addressing the full build-out timeline for The Bay.
What the fencing is actually blocking right now
The practical version matters just as much as the history. According to the Conservancy's own visitor guidance, construction on the Town Square has closed the area between the Municipal Auditorium and the Art Center, along with nearby routes, and that closure runs from now through October 2026. Parking lots along Boulevard of the Arts and in front of the Van Wezel remain open, but pedestrian routes between the Tamiami Trail parking and venues west of Van Wezel Way, including the park itself, the Van Wezel, and Holley Hall, are rerouted with posted signage. If you are walking to a concert or an evening at the park this month, budget a few extra minutes to find the marked path.
That inconvenience has a horizon. Once The Plaza opens in October, that same stretch reopens as the park's front door along North Tamiami Trail, flanked by the Royal Palms and canopy trees planted for the Promenade when it opened in 2025. The Resilient Shoreline, the mile of bayfront being rebuilt along the park's western edge to better withstand storm surge after Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton, is also slated to open this fall, which means two of the summer's most disruptive construction zones clear out around the same season.
What comes after the fencing clears
The bigger build is still years out. The first of three planned restaurants at The Bay will rise at the old U.S. Coast Guard station site, at the southwestern tip of the boat launch basin, and it will not open until fall 2027. Designed by the Sarasota firm Sweet Sparkman Architecture in a Sarasota Modern style and elevated on 12-foot pylons for flood resilience, the building will hold roughly 5,000 square feet under roof with fewer than 220 seats inside and about 100 more outdoors. The operator is Venice Pier Group, the family business behind Fins at Sharky's and Sharky's on the Pier down in Venice, along with the concessions stand at Siesta Beach Pavilion. It is not a chain testing the market cold. It is an operator that already knows how to run a public-facing restaurant on public land, on this coast, for a Sarasota-sized crowd.
That pattern, familiar local names taking on bigger public roles rather than new operators arriving untested, shows up elsewhere downtown this year too. Hob Nob Drive-In, a Sarasota original since 1957 that closed in 2024 after 67 years, reopened this year under new ownership with its black-and-white stripes intact, still serving smash burgers, chicken tenders, and milkshakes at the counter. Meanwhile Edward Zaki, who already owns 1592 Wood Fired Kitchen & Cocktails and Lucky 8, closed one of his rooms after what he described to the Herald-Tribune as a tough summer shaped by extreme heat, lingering hurricane impacts, and fewer international visitors. He is not exiting downtown. He is reopening the same space in November as Mimi, a more casual and affordably priced restaurant and cocktail lounge. Two closures this year, both absorbed by operators who already had a stake in the neighborhood rather than left to sit empty.
One exhibit worth catching before it closes
If you want a lower-stakes reason to walk down to the bayfront before the fall construction clears, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens' downtown campus is hosting Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith through September 13. The show pairs Goldsmith's flower photography with her portraits of Patti Smith, who has served as Selby's artist in residence, showing in the galleries of the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany and the Arts along with additional outdoor installations on the grounds, a five-minute walk from the same fencing everyone has been working around all summer.
What to watch for between now and next spring
- This fall: the Resilient Shoreline opens along the park's western edge, and The Plaza opens in the Cultural District, both closing out the summer's construction detours.
- September 13: Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith closes at Selby Gardens' downtown campus.
- November: Mimi opens in the space that until this year held one of Edward Zaki's other restaurants.
- Fall 2027: the first of The Bay's three planned restaurants opens at the old Coast Guard station site, operated by Venice Pier Group.
What this adds up to
None of this is really about a park getting bigger, though it is doing that too. The Bay has drawn more than a million visitors since its first phase opened in October 2022, and every new acre adds to that count. But the more interesting thread this year is how much of downtown's growth is running through names and operators the neighborhood already recognizes. A 1964 dedication is coming back to the same ground it was first given. A drive-in that closed in 2024 is back at the counter. A restaurateur who is closing one room is reopening it three blocks away under a new name rather than leaving the neighborhood altogether. Sarasota's bayfront is expanding without discarding what it used to call itself, and for anyone who already calls this neighborhood home, that is worth noticing before the fencing comes down.
Curious what any of this means for property values along the bayfront, or just want a local's read on what changes next? Schemmel Milland tracks this stretch of downtown block by block. Browse Properties to see what is currently available in the neighborhood.
