If you live on Lido or around St. Armands, you already know the island is not "back." It is coming back on a schedule, address by address, and the schedule is the story. One restaurant is already packed on a Tuesday. One is a construction fence with a "coming soon" sign. One is still a development application working its way toward a July committee hearing. Read the Circle building by building this summer and you get a clearer picture of the next eighteen months than any recap can offer.
Here is where things actually stand as of early July 2026, and where residents can slip away when the Circle gets loud.
22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents: Nōnnō Umberto is the one that already worked
The most useful data point on the island right now sits at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents. Le Colonne, the Salustri family's longstanding Italian room, was forced dark by Helene and Milton in 2024. It reopened in the first week of January under a new name honoring Simone Salustri's father, Umberto.
The soft opening was not soft. 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. Those numbers matter because they tell you what pent-up demand looks like on the Circle right now. A rebranded restaurant with a January opening did not need a ramp. The audience was already there, waiting.
For a resident, the practical read is this: reservations are not decorative on the Circle in 2026. They are the difference between eating and pacing the sidewalk. If Le Colonne's return is the template, expect every subsequent reopening to draw the same compressed rush.
While the family was rebuilding the brick-and-mortar, Simone and Mayner opened an Italian food truck called Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen last year to keep the business alive. That detail is worth carrying to the next section.
300 John Ringling Blvd: Pinchers is aiming for October
The most talked-about lease of the summer is the old Tommy Bahama space. On June 30, the Business Observer confirmed the tenant.
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.
Two things are worth flagging. First, the company. Pinchers is among more than a dozen concepts within the Phelan Family Brands portfolio. The company was established in 1997 with the debut of Pinchers Crab Shack in Bonita Springs and has expanded over the years to include other concepts like Deep Lagoon and Texas Tony's Rib & Brewhouse. This is not an experiment. It is an operator with a decade-plus of Gulf Coast rooms behind it.
Second, the geography. Pinchers has 10 restaurants along the Gulf Coast, from Naples to Wesley Chapel. The closest to St. Armands are in Lakewood Ranch and Venice, about 14 and 20 miles away, respectively. For a resident, this is the first time the concept has been genuinely walkable. Casual seafood with a family-friendly tone landing in a Circle slot that had been quietly upscale for years is a real shift in the mix.
The building itself has a small backstory that only Circle regulars will appreciate. Until late 2024, the location at 300 John Ringling Blvd. was the home of Tommy Bahama, which relocated to 465 John Ringling Blvd. in the former Shore restaurant spot after the hurricanes. Which is a clean segue.
24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents: Shore is a 2027 story
If you have been wondering when Shore comes back, the answer is: not soon, but the paperwork is now real.
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 design language in the application is a tell about how post-storm construction on the barrier islands is going to read for the next decade. "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."
Flood panels at the first story are not a decorative choice. They are what new Circle construction is going to look like, and it is worth getting used to seeing them referenced in permits and marketing materials from here forward.
On the timeline: 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. Bookmark that date if you follow Circle governance. It is the next meaningful checkpoint for a project that will reshape the north side of the roundabout.
The Circle, read as a timeline
Here is the same information a resident actually needs, in the order it will affect a Friday dinner reservation:
| Address | Concept | Status as of July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 22 S. Blvd of the Presidents | Nōnnō Umberto (Salustri family) | Open since January |
| 465 John Ringling Blvd | Tommy Bahama | Open in the former Shore space |
| 300 John Ringling Blvd | Pinchers Crab Shack | Under buildout, targeting October |
| 24 and 28 N. Blvd of the Presidents | Shore + mixed-use redevelopment | Site plan filed, DRC hearing July 15, buildout Q4 2027 |
The Circle is not one recovery. It is four different clocks running at once.
The ownership signal behind the Shore rebuild
One more piece of the Shore story is worth pulling out because it changes how you read the block. Kauffman Shore Properties purchased the two parcels on North Boulevard of the Presidents for $100 apiece from other entities linked to the Kauffman family on Jan. 6, according to Sarasota County property records. Dr. Mark Kauffman is a prolific Sarasota property owner and developer; Mindy Kauffman is his daughter.
Nominal intra-family transfers of parcels that were sitting vacant since 2024 are how long-hold owners reposition dormant land ahead of a permitted redevelopment. Translation for a neighbor: this is a patient owner with a long clock, not a quick flip. Expect the site to be fenced and quiet for months while the entitlements move, then move quickly once permits land.
The reason locals feel calmer than the Circle looks
The counterweight to all of this is a five-minute drive south. If the Circle right now is a construction site with a great pasta room in the middle, the southern tip of the island is doing what it has always done.
The confusion that trips up even long-term residents: there are two Ted Sperlings, and they do not overlap. Ted Sperling Park at South Lido Beach and Ted Sperling Nature Park at South Lido Beach are not the same place. The beach park is for swimming, sunbathing, picnicking, and family time with restrooms and Gulf-front sand. The Nature Park, by contrast, has its own entrance and purpose: it's strictly for kayaking, paddle boarding, and connecting with nature. There's no swimming beach, no snack bar, and no lifeguards, just water, mangroves, and wildlife.
If you have out-of-town family in town for a summer weekend and you want to hand them the Lido that is not currently being rebuilt, the Nature Park launch is the answer. South Lido (Ted Sperling Park) is the island's primary kayak and paddleboard launch into Sarasota Bay. It is well suited for calm-water routes and wildlife viewing, and it also serves as a gateway to Big Pass and New Pass. Always time your paddle to the tides and currents, especially near the passes.
Currents in Big Pass are not a caution to skim over. Swimmers should beware of strong currents especially on the northwest side of "Big Pass," the waterway channel that is between north Siesta Key and South Lido Key leading out to the Gulf of Mexico. There are marked NO SWIMMING buoys. A paddle out from the launch is different from a swim off the beach, and the two get conflated by visitors on a regular basis.
What this summer actually asks of a resident
Take the four Circle addresses, the two Ted Sperlings, and one food truck, and the practical shape of a Lido summer becomes clear:
- Book Nōnnō Umberto ahead. The first-week numbers were not a novelty. They are the new baseline for a Circle with fewer open rooms than it had two summers ago.
- Watch October. A Pinchers opening will pull weekend traffic differently than the Tommy Bahama that used to sit in the same footprint. Different price point, different pace, different valet math.
- Track July 15. The Development Review Committee session on the Kauffman Shore project is the next moment the north side of the Circle has a public conversation about its future.
- Use the Nature Park on the weekends the Circle overflows. It is under ten minutes from any Lido address and has almost no overlap with the crowds a reopening pulls in.
- Follow the food truck. Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen was the Salustri family's bridge between two versions of their business. It is a useful reminder that the Circle's recovery has been happening off the Circle as much as on it.
The pattern on Lido this year is not decline and it is not restoration. It is a working island with staggered reopenings, patient long-term owners, and one very quiet mangrove launch at the south end that has not changed at all. For a resident, knowing the schedule is the whole game.
If you own on Lido, St. Armands, or the surrounding barrier islands and you want an agent who reads the market at this level of address-by-address detail, Donna Wrobel is happy to talk through what any of this means for your home. Let's Connect.
