The beach is finished. The buildings are not. That gap, more than any single ribbon-cutting or grand re-opening, is the story of St. Armands this summer.
If you have lived on Lido or the Circle for any length of time, you already know the rhythm of a Sarasota recovery: sand comes first because federal money moves it, then storefronts follow at the pace of private capital, insurance settlements, and permit calendars. What is unusual about summer 2026 is how visible that gap has become. You can walk from a beach that just gained sixty to a hundred feet of width to a stretch of North Boulevard of the Presidents where two parcels have sat quiet since the 2024 storms.
Here is what a resident should actually know about the changes on the ground right now, and what is coming between the end of shorebird season and the January art crowds.
The Beach You Live Next To Is a Different Beach
The ribbon cutting happened on May 26. That was the official close of a project that pumped roughly 300,000 cubic yards of sand across 1.2 miles of Lido shoreline, sourced from dredging in New Pass to the north. City Engineer Nikesh Patel told reporters the work added approximately sixty to one hundred feet of usable width along the pavilion stretch.
Two things worth carrying with you as you walk it this summer:
- The New Pass channel is deeper now. Sailors who used to run aground on the shifting sandbars between Lido and Longboat should find the transit noticeably easier, which was a side benefit the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built into the project design.
- This is the second cycle of a fifty-year federal renourishment agreement. The first cycle in 2021 used 700,000 cubic yards from Big Pass. The next one is roughly five years out, sooner if a storm forces the timeline.
The part that is not finished is the dunes. Construction on the vegetated dune system, running from the Lido Beach Pavilion south to the residential stretch above Ted Sperling Park, is scheduled to start this fall after nesting season closes and finish in early 2027. The dunes will top out at about 6.6 feet, an increase of roughly two feet over what was there before, planted with sea oats, beach morning glories, and west coast dune sunflowers. The stated goal is to raise storm protection from a ten-year event to a twenty-five-year event. The project budget is about $1.2 million, with three walkover replacements included at the pavilion, the north pavilion lot, and the North Lido access at the John Ringling and Benjamin Franklin curve. Progress updates and the full sand placement schedule live at the City of Sarasota's Engage Sarasota portal.
"I can remember surfing out here a couple of years ago, and the beach ended about where we're standing." — Congressman Greg Steube, at the May 26 ribbon cutting
The Circle's Storefronts, In Two Columns
The retail picture is more uneven than a walk around the park suggests. The fall of 2025 brought a wave of grand re-openings after nearly a year of interior rebuilds. What has not happened yet is redevelopment of the properties that took the worst structural damage.
| Back open on the Circle | Still in transition |
|---|---|
| Nōnnō Umberto (the rebrand of Le Colonne at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents) | Shore Restaurant site at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents |
| Tommy Bahama | The former Chase Bank building on North Boulevard of the Presidents |
| Kilwin's Chocolate and Ice Cream Shop | The adjacent former candy shop parcel |
| Le Shop, Blue Dolphin Cafe, Carilhoa | Various interior tenant fit-outs across the Circle |
Nōnnō Umberto is the most talked-about of the reopenings. Owners Simone Salustri and Amber Mayner closed Le Colonne after Helene and Milton, kept the family working through the Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen food truck through 2025, and reopened under a new name honoring Simone's father Umberto. Their soft opening the first week of January drew more than 800 diners across seven nights, according to Mayner. The menu is Italian seafood and steakhouse, and the lobster ravioli aragosta survived the rebrand.
Two blocks away, the plans for a rebuilt Shore Restaurant went formal in June. Kauffman Shore Properties LLC submitted a site plan to the City of Sarasota for a three-story mixed-use building at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, replacing the former Chase Bank structure and the vacant candy shop building. The application, prepared by Kimley-Horn, describes more than 17,000 square feet of commercial space topped with a condo on 0.33 acres, with flood panels on the first story and other resilient design measures. The buildout date on the application is the fourth quarter of 2027. The Development Review Committee was scheduled to take it up on July 15. Coverage from Your Observer has the full timeline.
If you have wondered why those two parcels have sat so long, the answer is in the Sarasota County property records: the parcels transferred between Kauffman family entities in January for $100 apiece, a common signal that ownership was being consolidated before a development filing.
The Café on St. Armands Question
For residents who grew up on Café L'Europe, the space at 431 St. Armands Circle is worth a return visit if you have not been. Oysters Rock Hospitality took the 51-year-old restaurant Mediterranean in early 2025, with small plates spanning Spain, Greece, Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Wet Bar lounge and Café Soleil, a morning coffee-and-cocktail room, share the building. The reviews out this spring suggest the format has settled in.
Two doors down the block from any of these rebrands, you can still get the anchors that predate all of this: Columbia Restaurant, open since 1959 and still the longest-running restaurant in Sarasota County, and Lynches Pub & Grub, which owner Jason Burns has run on the Circle for 23 years.
What the Visioning Sessions Actually Decided
If you missed the two public visioning sessions at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium on February 27 and April 13, the summary is shorter than the workshop days suggested. Some 160 stakeholders participated in the first session. Facilitator David Brain, a longtime New College sociology professor now with Civic Design Strategies, sorted the input into 61 ideas.
The priority ranking, by percentage of table responses:
- Traffic: 27.86 percent
- Redevelopment of the commercial district: 24.59 percent
- Flooding and the Circle's boutique character: 18.03 percent each
- Public realm conditions like sidewalks and landscaping: 11.47 percent
The consensus that mattered was quieter than the ideas list. Almost everyone in the room agreed that until the recurring flooding is solved, none of the retail-mix or streetscape improvements pencil out. That is why the $13.5 million in federal Resilient SRQ funding, with a City of Sarasota match of roughly $478,000, is the number you should file away. Design work is only beginning. Sarasota County Stormwater told the room construction is not expected to start until 2029.
For context on how the money is moving, the Sarasota County Board of Commissioners in December 2025 allocated approximately $57 million in federal disaster recovery funding through the Resilient SRQ Infrastructure Program, the HUD Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery initiative tied to Debby, Helene, and Milton. The St. Armands drainage project is one piece of that larger allocation.
The Weekend Texture, End of Summer Edition
August on the Circle is quieter than any month between October and May, and residents tend to use it that way.
A few things worth putting on the calendar:
- Savor Sarasota carried through June with Crab & Fin at 420 St. Armands Circle offering a $25 two-course lunch and $45 three-course dinner. Watch for the fall program in September, which usually repeats the format.
- The Bay Runner trolley still runs free between downtown and Lido Key, which makes an early dinner on the Circle possible without moving your car off the driveway.
- The fall event calendar starts building in November with the 37th Annual St. Armands Circle Art Festival on November 14 and 15, followed by Fright Night in October and the Craft Festival cycle running through the winter. The 23rd Annual St. Armands Circle Art Festival is already on the books for January 24 and 25, 2027.
The one thing worth doing before the dune project begins in the fall is a walk along the widened beach at low tide. What you are seeing is a five-year window. The next time this stretch looks quite this open, most of us will be five years older and reading about the third renourishment cycle.
What This All Means Between Now and Fall
Put the pieces together and the summer's story reads like this. The beach is a decade ahead of the retail buildings. The federal money to fix the drainage is real, but the construction start is still years off. The private capital rebuilding the storefronts is moving property by property, and the two most visible vacant lots on North Boulevard of the Presidents finally have a filed plan attached to them.
For a resident, none of this changes what makes the Circle worth walking on a Tuesday evening. It does change the answer to the question you get from out-of-town guests about what happened here and what is next. You now have the dates.
If you own on Lido, St. Armands, or Bird Key and want a straightforward read on how any of the projects above touches your block specifically, Anthony LaPorta keeps close tabs on the St. Armands and Sarasota markets and is happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.