Resilient Shore project plans to navigate city approval waters

If the city approval process goes as hoped, St. Armands Circle may be re-Shore-d by early 2028. 

The buildings at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, closed since the back-to-back flooding events of the 2024 hurricane season, have been gutted and the infrastructure is being fortified to bring Shore restaurant and boutique back to the Circle.

Following the two rounds of flooding from the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton, owner Tom Leonard shut down operations and later leased the building at 465 John Ringling Blvd. to Tommy Bahama, which moved its restaurant less than a mile east from its also flooded — and closer to the Gulf — location at 300 John Ringling Blvd. on the opposite end of the commercial district. 

Shore also operates a restaurant and retail boutique at 800 Broadway St. on the north end of Longboat Key. 

Leonard plans to go beyond a restaurant and retail store at the new St. Armands location. He plans to include a cafe and, on a new third floor, residential space designed to potentially serve as a boutique hotel if a future zoning code change permits such use in the city’s Commercial Tourist district.

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The four business quadrants of St. Armands Circle make up the only CT zone district in the city. The building, which includes planned expansion to cover several parking spaces in the alley between it and the city parking deck, totals approximately 17,000 square feet of mixed-use space.

While Shore’s return to St. Armands will likely be welcomed by many, the third floor — which is permitted in CT providing a building height cap of 35 feet — will have its detractors. St. Armands residents and merchants have long opposed any type of hotel development on the key, which was a common theme during recent St. Armands visioning workshops facilitated by the city.

“It’s no hidden secret that I would love to do a boutique hotel, but it's not approved, so the only thing we can build right now is a residential unit,” Leonard said. “It’s a process we have to go through to build, and maybe I’ll live up there someday the way things are going.”

For now, the top floor is planned to be built as a shell. A site plan shows a total of 4,580 square feet of residential space surrounding a central pool. Four spaces are labeled as suites. There is also an area labeled for a gym in the southwest corner. 

“We'll probably open the retail and the cafe, and then the restaurant shortly after,” Leonard said. “We'll run the elevator, we'll run the utilities, we'll run everything you may need essentially, and put the walls up and any doors and windows to dry it in, but I'm not so sure that we'll finish (the third floor). It really just depends on timing and budget.”

The project is scheduled to make its initial appearance before the city’s Development Review Committee on July 15.

'A feat of engineering'

Conceptual renderings of the new Shore show it as mid-century modern architecture, not unlike Leonard’s now-leased building at the opposite end of the northeast quadrant of the Circle. 

Leonard said he sees the design as a complement to the eclectic collection of older structures in the retail and commercial district. 

“In a mixed-use shopping center, which I really think that's what St. Armand should be, a variation of architecture is kind of cool,” he said. “I like to see buildings have some different façades and some different character. I would like to see St. Armands be more flood-resilient. I would like to see the federal government, the state government, and our county and city to be more supportive and try to incentivize people, whether it be through some kind of a tax incentive, to flood-proof buildings. I don't ever want to go through what I went through a couple years ago again, not only for myself, but to watch fellow merchants lose everything was just sickening.”

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To avoid the FEMA 50% rule, which prohibits renovation of flood-prone properties whose cost exceeds 50% of the value of the structure without elevating it above flood level, the partnership of Kauffman Shore Properties LLC is installing flood-proof glass on the ground floor, effectively making it an inside-out aquarium.

“It’s a significant cost,” Leonard said of the glass, which comes at a price of $5,000 per linear foot times 10 feet in height. “It’s going to take the whole building to support the price to do all this.”

Hence the top floor condo — or potentially future hotel rooms, to help pay for the building. Leonard offered no specifics about the cost, only that it will be "in the millions."

“It's a feat of engineering,” he said of the infrastructure to support the flood-proof glass. “We’re going have a 20-inch slab going through the whole building. If we, heaven forbid, ever do get a storm, which I hope we don't, and we stay dry the federal government isn't in there writing checks.”

Kauffman Shore Properties is a partnership between Leonard and the commercial property developer and owner Kauffman family of Sarasota, the team including Mark Kauffman and his daughter, Mindy Kauffman.