If you live on the keys, you have probably heard that summer is the quiet season. That framing does not quite fit 2026. Between January and the Fourth of July, three of the biggest storefronts on St. Armands Circle changed hands or changed names, a national seafood chain signed a long lease at the corner most people still call the Tommy Bahama building, and a longtime Longboat restaurant filed papers to rebuild from the studs. The Circle you walk on a Tuesday evening in July is not the Circle you walked in July 2024, and the differences say something about how the island is choosing to come back.
The Circle Is Rebuilding, Not Restoring
The through-line for every restaurant story below is the 2024 storm season. Helene and Milton did not just close doors for a few weeks. They forced operators to decide whether to reopen the same concept, pivot to a new one, sell the lease, or walk away. What is opening this summer and next is the result of those decisions, and the pattern is clear: the Circle is rebuilding with different names, deeper pockets, and flood-conscious construction, not restoring what was there before.
| Address | Before the Storms | What's Coming | Target Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents | Le Colonne | Nōnnō Umberto | Open since late Dec. 2025 |
| 300 John Ringling Blvd. | Tommy Bahama | Pinchers | October 2026 |
| 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents | Chase Bank and a candy shop | Shore Restaurant plus retail and a condo | Q4 2027 buildout |
Nōnnō Umberto Kept the Family and Dropped the Name
The Salustri family's Italian restaurant at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents did not survive the 2024 hurricane season under its original name. When hurricanes Helene and Milton forced the family to close Le Colonne, they didn't know what the next steps would be. To keep the business afloat, Simone and Mayner opened an Italian food truck called Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen last year. The truck bought time. The brick-and-mortar reopened with a new name that honors Simone Salustri's father, Umberto, who opened the original restaurant.
The soft opening was less soft than planned. The owners of Nōnnō Umberto expected a fairly quiet soft opening for the rebranded Italian restaurant on St. Armands Circle the first week of January. But it was anything but quiet as 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. If you have driven past on a Friday night this spring and wondered why the sidewalk in front of the golden throne photo op has a line, that is why.
The menu is not a copy of Le Colonne's. The team is excited to share what the new menu has to offer for diners, especially the beloved Italian dishes that showcase seafood, like the ravioli aragosta (lobster ravioli).
Pinchers Signed for the Old Tommy Bahama Corner
The most visible vacancy on the Circle for the last two years has been the two-story corner at 300 John Ringling Blvd. That is no longer a vacancy. 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, tells the Business Observer.
For residents, the practical questions are scale and reach. The St. Armands restaurant will have in the "neighborhood" of 75 to 100 employees, according to Rooney, with around 200 seats. Two hundred seats is a large operator by Circle standards, and it puts the Pinchers footprint in the same order of magnitude as the Columbia. The nearest existing Pinchers locations are in Lakewood Ranch and Venice, roughly 14 and 20 miles away, so this fills a real gap for anyone on the keys who wanted casual Gulf Coast seafood without leaving the barrier islands.
Shore Is a 2027 Story, Not a 2026 One
If you have been waiting for Shore Restaurant to reopen on the Circle, plan on another eighteen months at minimum. Its St. Armands Circle location closed in December 2024 after suffering flooding damage from hurricanes. Shore co-founder Tom Leonard said at the time that infrastructure issues on the circle "forced us to re-evaluate our future here."
The project moving forward is different in scale and intent. Plans to create a new location for Shore Restaurant are moving forward, after a St. Armands landlord submitted a site plan to the city of Sarasota for a mixed-use project along North Boulevard of the Presidents. Mindy Kauffman of Kauffman Shore Properties LLC is listed as the property owner of 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, according to the development application. There, she is proposing a three-story building that would contain retail, restaurant and residential space on 0.33 acres.
The construction approach is the interesting part for anyone who lives on a barrier island. "The building design and site layout are intended to respond to the scale and character of St. Armands while incorporating resilient construction and flood-conscious improvements appropriate for the barrier island environment," Waddill and Pardue write in the development application. It would incorporate "updated construction measures and flood-conscious design measures such as flood panels on the first story, which will improve the long-term resilience of the property." The buildout date for the project is the fourth quarter of 2027, according to the development application. Next, the case is scheduled to appear before the Sarasota Development Review Committee July 15.
Read the three projects together and a pattern emerges. The independent operator rebranded and reopened fast. The national chain took the biggest empty box and put an October date on it. The redevelopment with a condo above it is the slowest because it is doing the most structural work. Same street, three different clocks.
Where Locals Actually Spend Slow Summer Evenings
The Circle gets the headlines. Whitney Plaza gets the residents. If you have been on Longboat during a June or July evening and wanted somewhere to go that was not a resort restaurant, the Summer Night Out series at 6920 Gulf of Mexico Drive is worth putting on the calendar.
The Summer Night Out event welcomed back Longboat Key locals and summertime visitors with shopping, good food, bubbles and something brand new. Heather Rippy, owner of Driftwood Beach Home and Garden, and Design2000 Salon co-owner Irina LaRose brought back their seasonal Summer Night Out event June 18. The monthly event is a chance for businesses in Whitney Plaza to connect with residents and visitors during the slower summer season.
What to expect at the next one:
- Pizza from Ventura's Italian Kitchen and prosecco poured at Driftwood Beach Home and Garden
- A rotating cast of local makers. In June that meant Tryla Brown Larson's Herb Methodology booth at Design2000, plus Stephanie Troxler of Little Blue Designs and Ellen Waugneux of Vintage Key showing at the Driftwood Beach studios
- A shop that carries more than fifty local artists, so the merchandise turns over between visits. Driftwood Beach features work from over 50 local artists, and Rippy plans to have two or more artists come to showcase their work at each event.
If you have been on the key for years and never made it past the plaza's Publix, this is a low-commitment way to see what the rest of the tenants have been doing.
Freedom Fest 2026 and the Rededicated Bicentennial Park
The Fourth is behind us, but the park it centered on is new territory worth walking. When asked what they thought of this year's special anniversary edition of Longboat Key's Freedom Fest, parade-goers landed on three main descriptors: Creative, cute and fun. The famous "World's Shortest Parade" exuded hometown patriotic pride the morning of the Fourth of July with a robust list of activities for residents, visiting family members and tourists seeking local entertainment over the holiday weekend. Starting at 9 a.m. along Bay Isles Road across the street from Town Hall, dogs dressed in patriotic capes and families waving miniature American flags awaited the starting cue.
The day included the rededication of Bicentennial Park and a butterfly release organized around Longboat community figures. Lucy Clark and Carlin and Ellie Mackintosh, granddaughters of Longboat Key artist May Lou Johnson, help release the first of 250 butterflies at Freedom Fest. The Fourth of July festivities also included a parade, canine costume contest, rededication of Bicentennial Park and family activities. If you missed the ceremony, the park is worth a stop the next time you are heading south on Gulf of Mexico Drive.
One Practical Note If You Live in Country Club Shores
Not a lifestyle item, but a your-water-pressure item. The Town will be starting a water main replacement project in Country Club Shores HOAs 1-3, using a pipe bursting technique, starting July 6, 2026. Pipe bursting is less disruptive than traditional open-trench replacement, but it still means intermittent shutoffs and a period where street work will affect the routes you use to get to the north bridge. The Town of Longboat Key posts updates on longboatkey.org as segments come online.
Looking Ahead to Fall
By October, Pinchers should be serving. Nōnnō Umberto will have its first full snowbird season under the new name. Shore's application will have cleared the Development Review Committee and moved into permitting. The Circle you shop this Thanksgiving will look different from the one you shopped in April, and it will keep changing through 2027. For anyone who owns a home here, that is the useful thing to know: the storm recovery is not a single event that ended, it is a rolling set of decisions by individual operators, and the pace of those decisions is picking up, not slowing down.
If you own on Longboat, Lido, or the mainland side of the bridges and want to talk through how the Circle's rebuild is shaping demand for waterfront and Bay Isles properties, Kelly Rosenberg is happy to sit down for a market consultation or a personalized home valuation. Thirty years on these islands means the questions you ask are questions she has answered before.
