Walk the Circle at dusk this July and the story tells itself in signage. A lit "Nōnnō Umberto" on South Boulevard of the Presidents. A brown paper "Pinchers coming soon" taped inside the old Tommy Bahama windows on John Ringling. Two vacant storefronts on the north side where a candy shop and a bank used to sit. A block west, bulldozers gone and dune stakes going in.
If you live on Lido, on the Circle, or over on Bird Key, you already know the pandemic-plus-hurricane narrative. What you might not have tracked is how fast the replacement version of this island is arriving, and how different it looks from what was here before Helene and Milton.
That is the through-line of this post. The Circle and Lido Beach are not being restored to 2023. They are being rebuilt, address by address, to a higher flood and storm standard, and 2026 is the year most of it becomes visible.
The Circle, address by address
Here is where things actually stand right now, keyed to street numbers you walk past every week.
22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents — Nōnnō Umberto. The rebranded successor to Le Colonne held a soft opening the first week of January 2026 and served more than 250 people on the first night, growing to 800 people over the course of the first week. The new name honors Simone Salustri's father, Umberto Salustri, who opened the original Le Colonne. After Helene and Milton, Simone and co-owner Amber Mayner kept the family afloat with Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen, a food truck, while they figured out what to do with the brick-and-mortar space. Menu leans Italian seafood and steakhouse, with the ravioli aragosta (lobster ravioli) among the returning dishes.
300 John Ringling Blvd — Pinchers (fall 2026). The old Tommy Bahama corner is leased to Pinchers, a Gulf Coast seafood chain, for more than 8,000 square feet, with plans to begin serving customers this fall. Kevin Rooney, VP of marketing for Phelan Family Brands, told the Business Observer they are shooting to open in October. The St. Armands restaurant will have "in the neighborhood" of 75 to 100 employees and around 200 seats. Scale matters here: Pinchers already has 10 restaurants along the Gulf Coast, with the closest in Lakewood Ranch and Venice, about 14 and 20 miles from the Circle. Whatever you think of another crab-and-shrimp concept on the Circle, 200 seats is a real dinner rush pulling into the parking garage.
24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents — future Shore. Two lots that have sat vacant since 2024 finally have a plan. Mindy Kauffman of Kauffman Shore Properties LLC is proposing a three-story mixed-use building of retail, restaurant, and residential space on 0.33 acres. The project would revitalize this part of St. Armands with more than 17,000 square feet of commercial space topped with a condo, including renovation of the existing Chase Bank building and replacement of the adjacent former candy shop structure. Shore Restaurant, with locations on Longboat Key and near Orlando, previously operated on the Circle and closed in December 2024 after suffering flooding damage from hurricanes; co-founder Tom Leonard said at the time that infrastructure issues on the Circle "forced us to re-evaluate our future here". If you are counting on Shore reopening for a specific birthday dinner, plan patiently: the buildout date in the development application is Q4 2027, and the case was scheduled for the Sarasota Development Review Committee on July 15.
431 St. Armands Circle — The Café on St. Armands. The former Café L'Europe. The Mediterranean-inspired menu leans on small plates and seafood, drawing from Spain, Greece, Italy, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Wet Bar is billed as a Gatsby-inspired lounge, and Café Soleil is a coffee bar with morning cocktails. If you have not been back since the L'Europe era, the pastry-and-espresso morning here is the easiest way to reset your expectations.
420 St. Armands Circle — Crab & Fin. Still serving since 1978, open Sunday through Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays until 9:30 p.m., with happy hour 4 to 6 p.m. and early dining 4:45 to 5:45 p.m. daily. Locals mostly care about the June carve-out: Savor Sarasota runs June 1–30, 2026, with a $25 two-course lunch and a $45 three-course dinner.
Read that list top to bottom and a pattern shows up. Every new lease on the Circle in 2026 is being written by an operator who watched the 2024 storm surge take out the previous tenant. That changes what gets built next.
What "flood-conscious" actually means on the Circle
The Shore application is the clearest window into it. In the filing, consultants Bill Waddill and Dominic Pardue of Kimley-Horn write that 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". In practice, that means "flood panels on the first story," among other updated construction measures.
There is also a FEMA overlay most residents have not tracked. During a December preapplication meeting with Sarasota's Development Review Committee, officials brought up that the project would need to comply with a FEMA rule that governs repairs. The upshot: on a barrier island in a Special Flood Hazard Area, a heavily damaged commercial structure often cannot be patched back to its 1970s footprint. It has to come up to the current code, first floor and all. That is why the two lots have been vacant for eighteen months. It is also why the Shore rebuild reads as a three-story project rather than a bar remodel.
For anyone who owns older commercial or condo footprint on the Circle, this is the mental model to hold going forward. The next lease-up you notice on Boulevard of the Presidents will be built to a different water line than the last one.
The beach you will walk this fall is not the beach you walked last summer
Lido Beach in July 2026 is a physically different beach than Lido Beach in July 2024. The scope is worth pinning down.
The Lido Beach renourishment project restored 1.2 miles of heavily eroded shoreline and placed 300,000 cubic yards of sand onto the beach. The $12 million cost was paid for by federal funding. Sand came from close to home: roughly 200,000 to 300,000 cubic yards dredged from both sides of the bridge to Longboat Key. City engineer Sage Kamiya framed the "why" in blunt terms, telling FOX 13 the 2024 storms brought up to seven feet of storm surge that moved so much sand from the beach front and pushed it over roads and places it "wasn't ever intended to be". A public ribbon-cutting was held at 1 p.m. at the Lido Beach Pavilion, 400 Benjamin Franklin Drive, on May 26.
The important part for residents, though, is the phase that has not started yet.
This fall, the city will begin a project to raise the protective dunes from Lido Beach Pavilion south to, but not including, Ted Sperling Park, increasing dune heights by 2 feet to an elevation of 6.6 feet and building them where they currently do not exist, to improve storm protection from a 10-year to a 25-year event. That is a real jump in the design storm the south end of Lido is engineered against. Native salt-tolerant plants will be installed as part of the dune package.
The knock-on for daily beach access: three of your usual walkovers are being rebuilt. The project includes the removal and replacement of three beach walkovers, one at the Pavilion, one at the north end of the pavilion parking lot, and the other at the North Lido Beach access at the curve of John Ringling and Benjamin Franklin boulevards. The walkovers project costs $840,000, including $770,000 in construction. Expect staged closures. Kamiya has said the work will be done in stages, "and as they are done there are going to be crossings between the dunes marked with posts and ropes."
If your morning routine is a walk from the Pavilion south, plan on detours from fall through winter and a new dune line by the time snowbird traffic returns.
In the owners' own words
Nōnnō Umberto's team gave the Observer the least sanitized quote about what a Circle rebuild actually took. Amber Mayner said "It feels like a dream come true that we did it, we made it," and Simone added "We worked from 6 a.m. to midnight for a month. It was sometimes one step forward, two steps back. But we did it." That is the honest version of the reopening timeline you will hear from most operators still standing on the Circle this summer.
The calendar residents are actually planning around
Skip the tourist listicles. These are the dates that reshape parking, dinner reservations, and beach traffic for anyone who lives here.
| Date | Event | Where it hits you |
|---|---|---|
| Sundays, year-round | Siesta Key Farmers Market, 8 a.m.–12 p.m. | Traffic over the north bridge |
| July 4, 2026 | Fourth of July Fireworks on Siesta Beach, evening | Ringling Causeway packed both ways |
| June 1–30, 2026 | Savor Sarasota, $25 lunch / $45 dinner prix fixe | Book Crab & Fin early |
| Fall 2026 | Sarasota Fall Fine Art Festival and Ferraris on the Circle | Boulevard closures around the Circle |
| Nov 13–16, 2026 | Siesta Key Crystal Classic Sand Sculpting Festival | South-end beach parking, not Lido |
| Feb 21, 2026 (past, annual) | LKRA Annual Breakfast Meeting, 9 a.m., Lido Beach Resort, 8th floor | The one meeting to attend if you own here |
Two logistics notes worth keeping in your pocket. The Bay Runner, a free open-air trolley, offers daily service between downtown and Lido Key and St. Armands Circle, which is the easiest way to avoid parking on a festival Saturday. And for beach access during the fall dune build, the pavilion, concessions area, Lido Pool, and north parking lot will continue regular operations even as staging happens south of the pavilion.
What to do with all of this
If you already live on Lido, St. Armands, or Bird Key, the near-term calendar is straightforward. Try Nōnnō Umberto before the winter crowd finds it. Reserve Crab & Fin on a June weekday. Watch the Chase Bank corner in December for demolition activity on the future Shore site. Walk the south-end dunes now, because the version you know is scheduled to be reshaped by spring.
If you know someone weighing a move to a Lido condo or a Bird Key home in the next twelve months, they are buying into an island in the middle of a rebuild, not at the end of one. That is a different conversation than the one they will get on a portal, and it is the conversation House of Sarasota has been having with clients since Helene. When you or a neighbor are ready to have it, download the Sarasota Relocation Guide and we will pick up from there.
