Why the Lido Key Tiki Bar Reopened in a Season and Shore Still Hasn't

Walk the loop around St. Armands Circle this September and the place feels finished. The tiki bar behind the Ritz-Carlton is pouring frozen drinks to a mid-week crowd. A block over, the dining room at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents is full most nights, the pasta coming out under a new name but the same family in the kitchen. Keep walking two more blocks to the corner of Madison Drive and North Boulevard of the Presidents, though, and the story changes. That corner is still concrete and steel, no glass, no roofline, closed off behind a fence.

Both corners were flooded by the same 2024 hurricane season. One came back on the timeline of a single summer. The other is still under construction almost two years later, with a completion date that keeps sliding. That gap is not a sign that one project is more competent than the other. It is the clearest evidence on the Circle right now of what actually happens when a building tries to solve the flooding problem instead of just reopening after it.

The Comebacks That Moved Fast

The Lido Key Tiki Bar closed for a year and a half after Tropical Storm Debby and hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through the beach club behind the Ritz-Carlton in 2024. It reopened quietly to the public in early April 2026, then marked the finish of the rebuild with a proper celebration on the sand on June 20, drawing about 200 people to watch a fire eater, a steel pan player and dancers from GRAE Productions send off the sunset. The rebuilt hut kept its classic thatched roof, added new TV screens for sports, and refreshed the menu with items like a tuna poke bowl and blackened fish tacos alongside the same rum-based frozen drinks regulars remember.

"It's a refined coastal escape where tropical storytelling, Gulf Coast freshness, and luxury cocktail craftsmanship meet in every glass."

That's how assistant food and beverage manager Heidi Finley described the reopened bar to Sarasota Magazine. The rebuild answered to the Ritz-Carlton's own construction schedule, not to a federal flood rule, and it shows in how quickly the doors reopened.

A few blocks away, the Italian restaurant longtime residents knew as Le Colonne went through a longer but still comparatively fast turnaround. When the storms forced the family to close, owner Simone Salustri and his wife Amber Mayner kept the business alive with a food truck, Buonissimo Mobile Italian Kitchen, while they gutted and renovated the brick-and-mortar space. The restaurant reopened at the end of December 2025 under a new name, Nōnnō Umberto, honoring Simone's father Umberto Salustri, who had opened the original restaurant. The soft opening was supposed to be quiet. Instead, staff served more than 250 people the first night and 800 over the first week.

Neither project had to satisfy a rule that forces a building up to modern flood code. Both rebuilt inside their existing footprints and reopened within roughly a year and a half of closing.

The One Corner Still Gutted, and Why That's Deliberate

Shore, the restaurant and boutique that had operated on the Circle for more than 15 years, closed in December 2024 after taking on repeated flood damage. Owner Tom Leonard was blunt about why at the time, saying infrastructure issues on the Circle had forced him to reevaluate the business's future there. He leased the old space at 465 John Ringling Blvd. to Tommy Bahama, which itself had been flooded out of its original storefront three blocks away at 300 John Ringling Blvd. and moved into Shore's vacated building. One storm-forced move triggered another.

Leonard's plan for Shore's return sits on a different corner entirely: the former Chase Bank building and an adjacent vacant candy shop at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, purchased through Kauffman Shore Properties LLC. The project is not a quick reopening. It is a full rebuild triggered by a federal rule that most residents have never had reason to think about.

During a pre-application meeting with the city's Development Review Committee in December 2025, staff flagged that repairs to the two buildings would likely exceed 50 percent of their appraised value, which the city put at roughly $1.3 million and $800,000. Under FEMA's so-called 50% rule, crossing that threshold means the entire structure has to meet current flood-resilience code, not just the portion being touched. That single number is why Shore's rebuild looks nothing like a renovation. Leonard is installing flood-proof glass at street level that runs about $500 per linear foot, work he has described as making the ground floor function like an aquarium. A site plan was formally filed with the city in June 2026, and demolition crews had already stripped the buildings down to concrete and steel by May.

"It's time for a little love on the Circle."

Leonard's own framing, offered as demolition began, captures the tradeoff. Reopening well is not the same speed as reopening fast, and this project chose the former on purpose.

The rebuild has also picked up a second source of delay that has nothing to do with flooding. Plans call for a third floor of residential units that could eventually convert to a small boutique hotel, a use the Circle's Commercial Tourist zoning does not currently allow. At a July 2026 Development Review Committee hearing, city planning staff questioned why individual spaces on that floor were labeled as suites if the use was meant to be residential, and the St. Armands Residents Association has pushed back hard, worried the project sets a precedent for hotel development across the Circle. As of the most recent filings, the city's own paperwork lists a fourth-quarter 2027 buildout, and Leonard has said the café and retail space may open months ahead of the restaurant rather than all at once.

Here's the comparison in plain terms:

What the Gap Actually Tells a Resident

The instinct, looking at a reopened tiki bar and a full dining room at Nōnnō Umberto, is to read the Circle as recovered. It mostly is, in the sense that matters for a Tuesday night out. But recovered and flood-resilient are not the same claim, and right now only one project on St. Armands is being forced to prove the second one. The tiki bar and Nōnnō Umberto rebuilt to reopen. Shore is being rebuilt to survive the next storm differently, which is a slower and more expensive thing to do, and it is happening because a specific federal cost threshold left Leonard no other option if he wanted to keep the same footprint.

That is worth knowing the next time a storefront reopens quickly on the Circle. Fast does not mean flood-proofed. If Shore's flood-proof glass and elevated construction standard becomes the template other property owners follow when their own buildings eventually need work, that corner at Madison and North Boulevard of the Presidents will end up being the more consequential story on the Circle than any single reopening this year.

On the Calendar This Fall

For residents planning around the Circle rather than analyzing it, one date is already locked in: the St. Armands Fall Festival of the Arts runs October 17 and 18, 2026, with free admission both days from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., bringing outdoor gallery-style booths of painting, sculpture, glasswork and jewelry back to the park at the center of the Circle. Pair a morning at the festival with lunch at Nōnnō Umberto or a walk past the Chocolate Emporium's new second location, and you have a fairly complete read on where the Circle stands this fall: mostly open, still healing in one specific corner, and worth watching if you care about how this island rebuilds the next time the water comes up.

If you are thinking about buying, selling, or just want a second set of eyes on how a particular stretch of Lido Key or St. Armands is holding up, Jeanne Egan pays attention to this level of detail because it is the kind of thing that matters once you actually live here. Let's Connect.