Two years after the back-to-back 2024 hurricanes rearranged the island's dining and lodging map, the summer of 2026 is when the replacements are finally showing up. If you live here, you've watched plywood come down on Gulf Boulevard for months. This is a field guide to what's already open, what lands before Labor Day, and what's worth pinning to the fall calendar, with a small argument tucked inside: the center of gravity on the island is shifting south.
The short version, on one page
| Property | Where | Status | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Luce, a Marriott Tribute Portfolio hotel | 6300 Gulf Blvd | Opened June 11, 2026 | 200 rooms, largest pool on the island |
| Sundrop at The Luce | Inside The Luce | Open now | One of two in-house dining concepts |
| Baby Turtle Beach Club | Beach and pool at The Luce | Fall 2026 | Casual American coastal, dawn to dusk |
| Moon by Malio's | 109 8th Avenue, Pass-a-Grille | Opening September 2026 | Wild-caught seafood, ~200 seats across three levels |
| Berkeley Beach Club | 109 8th Avenue, Pass-a-Grille | Reopening as boutique hotel | Ground floor houses Moon by Malio's |
| Point Chaud Coffee & Café | 1101 4th St S | Open (since Feb) | Crepes and Lavazza in the former Ice & Cream Creamery |
The Luce is the biggest single change to the island in a decade
The Luce, the highly anticipated new addition to St. Pete Beach's shoreline, opened its doors on June 11th, with 200 accommodations including a selection of bungalow studio suites. That alone is a lot of new keys on the mid-island stretch. What matters more for residents is what comes with it. The property features two original dining concepts and St. Pete Beach's largest pool, and the first restaurant, Sundrop, is already serving.
The second concept is the one to circle. Baby Turtle Beach Club joins the lineup in Fall 2026, bringing casual American Coastal fare directly to the beach and pool from dawn to dusk. Dawn-to-dusk beach service, open to the public alongside guests, is a category the island has been thin on since 2024. Beyond the beach, the property features curated daily activities including weekend yoga, live DJ Groove Sessions, a nightly Sunset Social, poolside and beach cabanas, lawn games, a 24-hour fitness center, and a retail boutique.
If you already live on the island, the practical read is this: the Luce corridor at 63rd is now programmed seven days a week. That is a different animal than a hotel that just rents rooms.
Pass-a-Grille is where the story gets interesting
Head south. The most consequential opening of the year is not at a resort at all.
A fine dining restaurant focused on wild-caught seafood will take over a prized location in St. Pete Beach's Pass-a-Grille. Moon by Malio's will open at 109 8th Avenue on the ground floor of the boutique Berkeley Beach Club hotel. The space was formerly home to The Dewey, which suffered damage from the back-to-back hurricanes in 2024 and never reopened.
The Dewey's absence has been a hole in the neighborhood for the better part of two years. What is filling it is not a like-for-like replacement. Moon by Malio's owners Derek and Jen Iavarone describe their newest concept as the "playful little sister" of their other two restaurants, Malio's Prime Steakhouse in downtown Tampa and Malio's Beach House on St. Pete Beach. Their newest restaurant is expected to open in September, occupying roughly 4,000 square feet of the Berkeley Beach Club across its dining room, patio, and rooftop, seating about 200 guests total.
Two hundred seats, three levels, in Pass-a-Grille, from an operator who already runs Malio's Beach House further up the island. Read that as a bet on the south end.
The pattern is worth naming out loud. The Luce reopened a mid-island resort at 63rd. Berkeley Beach Club and Moon by Malio's are reopening a boutique hotel and its restaurant at 8th. Between them, the two projects put more new hospitality square footage on the south half of the island than on the north half, where Corey Avenue has been the historic anchor. If you live near Pass-a-Grille, plan for more Friday-night foot traffic on 8th Avenue by autumn.
What that means for your regular week
New openings are the loud news. The quieter news is that the recurring stuff residents actually use every week has settled back into a rhythm. A partial map, using named operators only:
- Sunday mornings. The Corey Avenue Sunday Fresh Market on Corey Ave in the north end.
- Monday and Tuesday, TradeWinds side. Margarita Monday at Playa Taco offers a margarita flight featuring 4 flavors plus chips and salsa for $22. Taco Tuesday is $2 off all tacos with 50 percent off the Playarita house margarita.
- Midweek pours. Tequila Tasting Wednesday at Playa Taco, Whiskey Tasting Thursday at Pete's Gulf Bistro at 4 p.m., and Rum Tasting Friday at RumFish Sports Bar at 4 p.m. Each pairs two half-ounce tastings with a full cocktail built on the featured spirit.
- Live music, Jimmy B's. The July calendar at Jimmy B's Beach Bar runs day and night sets across the week, with acts like The Regulars Band, Cormac Kavanagh, Kingpin, and Seth Campbell. Two-set days on weekends are the norm.
- Beach stewardship. The monthly TradeWinds St. Pete Beach Cleanup is one of the easier ways to meet neighbors who also live here year-round.
- Library, for the parents. Story Time on Tuesday mornings and Boogie and Bubbles on Thursday, July 30, ten to ten-twenty a.m., twenty minutes of music and movement, great for ages two to five, both at the St. Pete Beach Library at 365 73rd Ave.
None of that is new. All of it is the fabric you can rely on when the vacationers rotate through.
When you want to leave the island for the night
The strongest reason to cross the bridge this month is a short cabaret run downtown. American Stage's Summer Cabaret Series is an intimate run of three Saturday night performances at 7 p.m. Opening night, Beach Please!, sets the tone with yacht rock and pop hits from The Beach Boys, ABBA, Hall and Oates, and more. The series continues July 18 with Black Girl Magic, celebrating powerhouse Broadway voices, and wraps July 25 with Sammy and Dino, a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin. $35 plus fees per show.
Thirty-five dollars is the number that earns its place here. For a full cabaret show with a live band and a bar, that is roughly what a decent bottle of wine costs at any of the resort restaurants you already know.
For rainy afternoons, the Florida CraftArt exhibition Future Form opened its reception July 11 and continues its run downtown, which is the kind of gallery visit that pairs neatly with an early dinner on Central before driving back over the Pinellas Bayway.
One more thing worth flagging for fall
Point Chaud Coffee, known for sweet and savory crepes in dozens of variations, Lavazza coffee, and lunch bites, opened its newest location last February at 1101 4th St S in St. Pete Beach in the former Ice and Cream Creamery location. If you missed the opening in the winter shuffle, it is still one of the few dedicated crepe operators between here and downtown, and the Lavazza pull is a real one.
The bigger picture, though, is still the shift south. By September, if the Moon by Malio's timeline holds, Pass-a-Grille will have a new anchor restaurant on 8th Avenue and a reopened boutique hotel above it. By late fall, The Luce will have both of its restaurants running and a beach club operating from dawn. If you have been treating the north end of the island as the default for a nice dinner out, that habit is worth updating.
Let's Connect
If you own on the island and you are curious how these openings, and the new hotel keys and dining seats that come with them, are showing up in the way buyers are shopping St. Pete Beach and Pass-a-Grille this summer, Paul Simon is happy to talk through it with the same specificity you would want from a neighbor who has been watching every plywood board come down.
