Walk the Circle on a Tuesday morning in August and the storefronts look, at a glance, like they always have. Awnings out, sidewalks swept, parking tight by ten. Look more closely and the tenant list has quietly turned over faster in the last twelve months than in any twelve-month stretch anyone here remembers.
That is the useful thing to understand about the Circle right now. What reads as recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton is really a compressed refresh. The spaces that flooded hardest came back with different operators, elevated mechanicals, and a menu of names that did not exist here two summers ago.
Of roughly 130 street-level commercial spaces on St. Armands Circle, about 90 were open as of January 2026. The other forty are why the block still feels uneven, and why the new arrivals matter more than a typical season's churn.
The 28 S. Boulevard Block, Rebuilt Top to Bottom
The clearest snapshot of what has changed is a single three-unit building at 28 S. Boulevard of the Presidents. Hurricane Helene took it down to the studs. It reopened in stages, with drywall replaced up to four feet and new electrical and HVAC placed on an elevated platform. As of late June, the last of its three bays is filled.
Tenant | Opened | What it is |
|---|---|---|
November 2025 | Coffee shop, wine bar, and a small provisions market from Sydney and Taylor Nichols | |
Acadia Jewels Fine Jewelry & Design | January 1, 2026 | A Bar Harbor, Maine jeweler's first Florida location |
Chocolate Emporium | Soft opening late June 2026 | Second location of the Anna Maria Island chocolatier |
Chocolate Emporium is the newest arrival and the one to watch. The shop leans hard into small-batch and limited-edition work: pickle-flavored fudge, butterscotch haystacks, a St. Armands-exclusive bacon-and-caramel bark cooked from real bacon on the premises, and a pistachio Dubai-chocolate riff. Manager Liv Baker has said the Anna Maria original opened in August 2025 and the team already views St. Armands as the start of a small chain.
The Legacy Tenants, Under New Names
Two of the Circle's longest-running dining rooms came back this year under different signage.
The Italian restaurant at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents, known as Le Colonne for decades, reopened December 29, 2025 as Nōnnō Umberto, named for founder Umberto Salustri. His son Simone Salustri and daughter-in-law Amber Mayner ran their food truck, Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen, through the closure and rebuilt the brick-and-mortar in what Simone described as a month of six-a.m.-to-midnight days. The soft opening was supposed to be quiet. They served 250 people the first night and roughly 800 across the first week. The menu keeps the seafood-forward dishes locals asked for by name, including the ravioli aragosta.
At 431 St. Armands Circle, the 51-year-old Café L'Europe reopened last year as The Café on St. Armands under Oysters Rock Hospitality. The menu is Mediterranean small plates with a seafood focus, drawing from Spain, Greece, Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East. Two side rooms extend the concept: The Wet Bar, a Gatsby-inspired cocktail lounge, and Café Soleil, a morning coffee bar that also pours breakfast cocktails.
The Smaller Turnovers Residents Actually Notice
Three more changes to know about as you circle the block:
St. Armands Jewelers has taken over the Jewelry by Cole space at 7 N. Boulevard of the Presidents. New owner Mia Tohar Eylon and her family are running the store. Diane DelloRusso, who managed Jewelry by Cole for years, came out of retirement to help with the transition and to keep familiar faces at the counter. Custom design and repair remain part of the offer.
The Sarasota Style, a locally branded lifestyle and clothing shop, opened at 410 St. Armands Circle with ribbon-cuttings on January 14, 2026. Co-owner Malia Price stocks Sarasota-branded apparel, water bottles, and towels, with a bamboo-fabric line for the cooler months that has drawn early interest.
Tommy Bahama and Kilwin's Chocolate and Ice Cream Shop held grand re-openings in September 2025 after nearly a year of repairs. Blue Dolphin Cafe, Carilhoa, and Le Shop's owners have all publicly credited the storms with pushing them to rebuild rather than rebrand.
If you have been avoiding the Circle because you assumed everything on your list was still shuttered, the block from Columbia Restaurant north to the top of the loop is now essentially whole again.
What the Forty Empty Storefronts Tell You
The gap between roughly 90 open and 130 total spaces is the more honest measure of where the Circle sits. Chris Goglia, president of the St. Armands Residents Association, and Rachel Burns, executive director of the St. Armands Circle Association, have both pointed to the same reason: building owners are reluctant to invest deeply in tenant improvements while the drainage question is unresolved. Sarasota County allocated $13.5 million in Resilient SRQ federal recovery funds in December 2025 to upgrade the Circle's stormwater system, paired with roughly a half million from the city. Construction is not projected to start until 2029.
That timeline is doing more to shape which new tenants sign leases than any other single factor. Operators who have committed in the last year, Le Shop and Acadia Jewels and Chocolate Emporium among them, moved into spaces where the landlord had already elevated the mechanicals. The vacancies you see are largely the buildings where that math has not been solved yet.
For a resident, the practical read is that this summer's tenant mix is close to what next summer's will look like. The next wave of change is a construction wave, not a leasing wave.
The Summer Rhythm, Filled In
The events calendar has caught up faster than the storefronts. A short list of what is actually running through the back half of summer and into fall:
The 24th Annual St. Armands Circle Craft Festival anchored the mid-June weekend in Circle Park with roughly 175 artisans, and a green market ran alongside it. If you missed it, the format returns twice more this season.
Yoga in the Park continues on its usual cadence in Circle Park. Bring a mat and a bottle of water.
Savor Sarasota ran through June with 2-course $25 lunches and 3-course $45 dinners at participating Circle restaurants, including Crab & Fin at 420 St. Armands Circle.
Looking ahead: Exotic Cars on the Circle, the Jaguar Festival d'Elegance, the 17th annual Fright Night in October, and the Art Festival weekend that closes out the calendar year.
Visit Sarasota County reported that St. Armands still drew 53% of all county visitors in the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2025. That figure landed while parts of the Circle were still boarded up. The traffic you have been fighting on Boulevard of the Presidents this summer is what the recovery number looks like when the storefronts catch up.
Two Longer-Horizon Items to Have on Your Radar
Neither of these changes the coffee run this week, but both will change how the island reads over the next few years.
A 6.6-foot sand dune line is planned along Lido Beach later this year, part of the shoreline restoration project that draws on up to 300,000 cubic yards of dredged sand. It is the first physical piece of the surge-defense picture to actually go in the ground.
The Little Ringling Bridge between Coon Key and St. Armands Key is in design for replacement, with added bike and pedestrian lanes and improved evacuation capacity. Design work is underway.
The city ran two visioning workshops at Mote Marine's Keating Marine Education Center in February and April, and 61 improvement ideas came out of the first session alone. If the Circle looks materially different in 2031, this spring is when the argument for how got made.
The Circle you walked in 2023 is not the Circle you are walking now. A season's worth of new operators, two renamed anchors, a fully rebuilt three-unit building on the south side, and a resilience plan finally moving from meeting rooms to design bids. If you are thinking about how any of this affects the value of a home nearby, or you own a property on Lido, Bird Key, or Longboat Key and want a read on how the block is shaping up for the next selling season, the team at Roger Pettingell tracks these changes storefront by storefront. Contact us to talk through what it means for your address.
