The Lido Key Summer That Isn't Quite The Old Lido Key

Walk south from the North Lido access at dusk this July and the beach itself gives you the first hint that something has shifted. The sand runs wider than it has in years. The dune line, where there was one, is gone. And at the Ritz-Carlton beach club, a thatched roof stands where an empty concrete pad sat for most of 2025.

This is the first summer since Debby, Helene and Milton in which Lido Key is not, in some visible way, in the middle of cleanup. It is also not a return to 2023. The Circle's tenant list has changed, the shoreline has been rebuilt to a federal template, and the fall calendar contains a construction project that will alter the way you walk to the water. For residents, the more useful question this season is not "what came back" but "what is different now that it did."

The Tiki Bar as bellwether

If any single reopening captured how long the recovery has taken, it was the Lido Key Tiki Bar at the Ritz-Carlton Beach Club. Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricanes Helene and Milton didn't spare The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, in 2024, and while the team worked to get the hotel back up and running, the Lido Key Tiki Bar remained closed until, on a Friday in April 2026, it reopened with a fresh new tiki hut, a large menu and a slate of refreshing drinks. Like it was before the storms, the tiki bar is open to the public if people walk up to it from the beachside, with parking at a beach access just south of the compound.

That last detail matters more to residents than to hotel guests. The walk-up access is what makes the bar feel like a neighborhood spot rather than a resort amenity, and it is the reason its 18-month closure was felt by people who never stayed at the Ritz a day in their lives.

A Circle with a different roster

Most of the storefronts on St. Armands Circle are open again, but the tenant list you memorized before 2024 is not the tenant list you will see this month. Doors have been open for businesses like the Blue Dolphin Cafe and Le Shop for almost 10 months, and St. Armands has seen the tourism and local shopping demand restored, with Tommy Bahama and Kilwin's Chocolate and Ice Cream Shop hosting grand re-openings in September of 2025, and Carilhoa and the Blue Dolphin Cafe also putting in hours of work to get back open.

The 2026 arrivals and rebrands are where the mix has actually shifted:

The Sarasota Style held ribbon-cuttings with the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 14 and the Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 16, and the store, which celebrates everything Sarasota with its branding on clothing, water bottles, beach towels and more, is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily at 410 St. Armands Circle. A few doors away, the old Le Colonne name is gone. Owners Amber Mayner and Simone Salustri decided to reopen the restaurant under a new name recognizing the legacy of Simone's father, Umberto Salustri, who opened the original Le Colonne, and finished the renovation in time for the New Year.

The jewelry corner is turning over next. St. Armands Jewelers is taking the place of Jewelry by Cole with new ownership at 7 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, and new owner Mia Tohar Eylon recently announced she and her family look forward to holding a soft opening of the new jewelry store soon. Meanwhile, Chocolate Emporium will be opening a new location at 28 S. Boulevard of the Presidents, expanding from its shop at 216C Pine Ave. on Anna Maria Island, with a focus on small-batch sweets, chocolate truffles, chocolate-dipped treats, and its signature salt water taffy.

One high-profile return is still on the calendar rather than the sidewalk. Shore, a popular business on St. Armands Circle, left the island after back-to-back hurricanes and closed in 2024 after more than 15 years on the circle following significant damage during Hurricanes Helene and Milton. More than a year later, plans are underway to bring Shore back to the barrier island.

The through-line: the Circle has lost a few legacy names and gained a mix that leans more toward specialty retail and reopened flagships. If you have been away for a season, the map has changed enough to justify a walk-through before you assume you know where things are.

What 1.2 miles of new sand actually looks like

The most visible change on the island has nothing to do with retail. The Lido Beach renourishment project has successfully restored 1.2 miles of severely eroded shoreline along Lido Key in Sarasota, Florida, with a $12 million federal grant completely funding the massive beach restoration project. The renourishment filled the southern half of Lido Key, targeting areas that had seen up to 90 feet of shoreline degradation, with about 311,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from New Pass in five phases, or cuts.

Ninety feet is the number that reframes the whole project. If you own on the southern end, the difference between what your walk to the water looked like in early 2024 and what it looks like this week is close to a third of a football field of returned beach. The engineer's own description of what came before makes the point:

"We saw as you know probably saw up to seven feet of storm surge come in and it moved so much sand from the beach front as well, but then brought it over roads and places that it wasn't ever intended to be this is an opportunity to restore that and bring it back," said Sage Kamiya, an engineer for the City of Sarasota.

This is also not a one-off event. The coastal protection project was executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the city of Sarasota, part of a 50-year agreement for the renourishment of Lido Beach at approximately five-year intervals. The first renourishment under that agreement happened in 2021. This one, in 2026, is the second. Residents can now plan around a roughly five-year cadence rather than treating each nourishment as a one-off emergency response.

The fall project you should plan around

The sand is in place. The dunes are not. Much of the beach and dune sand from Lido Beach was left strewn about on roads, parking lots and inside homes after the 2024 hurricanes, and concurrent with the nearly complete Lido Beach renourishment, 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 the height of dunes that exist along Lido Beach by 2 feet to an elevation of 6.6 feet, and building them where they currently don't, to improve storm protection from a 10-year to a 25-year event. Included will be installation of native salt-tolerant plants for added storm protection.

The dune project brings a second, more disruptive piece with it. The walkover project will include 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, at a cost of $840,000, including construction cost of $770,000. If those three walkovers are the ones you use, expect staged closures this fall and winter. "It's going to have to be done in stages, and as they are done there are going to be crossings between the dunes marked with posts and ropes," Kamiya said.

If you host family in November or plan a beach walk after Thanksgiving dinner, the practical answer this year is to have a backup access in mind before you get to the curve.

The larger question the visioning sessions surfaced

Two City-run visioning sessions at Mote Marine Laboratory this year, on February 27 and April 13, distilled resident and merchant priorities for the Circle. The headline finding was blunt. If floods resulting from occasional heavy rain events, never mind storm surge, are not mitigated, nothing else really matters, and the same goes for addressing St. Armands' aging infrastructure, both above and below ground.

That is not just a sentiment. It is a live investment problem that the merchants association's own vice president framed in terms residents will recognize:

"If you think your business is going to flood every five years, then you have to cut your expected profit by 20% because you're going to get wiped out. If you could take that 20% probability of being flooded once every five years and bring it closer to zero, then you're going to invest more."

The response to that risk profile is under way. The Sarasota County Board of Commissioners voted back in December 2025 to allocate approximately $57 million in federal disaster recovery funding through the Resilient SRQ Infrastructure Program, a HUD Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery initiative tied to Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton. Specifics of the plan include supplying business owners with flood barriers, adding underground storage units, adding pavement that allows water to flow through it, tide check valves, and pump stations.

For a Lido Key resident, the practical read is this: the sand project you can already see is the easy part. The stormwater and infrastructure work that will actually change how the Circle absorbs the next heavy rain is a multi-year build funded but not yet finished. The Tiki Bar, the new shops, and the wider beach are the visible signals of recovery. The pumps, valves and permeable pavement are the ones that will determine whether next summer's list of "what's back" is any shorter than this one's.

A short summer to-do

A few practical notes if you have been off-island for the season:

1. Check the Ritz-Carlton Beach Club Tiki Bar's daily 11 a.m. to sunset hours if you plan to walk up from the public access.
2. Recalibrate the Circle: at least four storefronts have new names or new owners in 2026.
3. If you use the Pavilion, north-lot, or John Ringling curve walkovers, watch for fall staging closures and plan an alternate access.
4. If you follow the flood-resilience work, the Resilient SRQ funding decisions are the ones worth tracking through the winter.

Lido Key's summer of 2026 is quieter than 2024 and busier than 2025. It is also a good moment to walk the island with fresh eyes. If you are weighing what any of this means for a home you own here, or a home you are considering, Team Dunn is happy to talk through the specifics from the Michael Saunders & Company office on Siesta Key. Start Your Sarasota Search when the time feels right.