The Beach End of Atlantic Avenue Had Its Own Reinvention

If you've searched "what's new in Delray Beach" this year, you've read some version of the same story: a wave of restaurant openings west of Swinton Avenue, most of them tied to Sundy Village, the mixed-use development at Atlantic and Swinton where Barcelona Wine Bar became the first full-service tenant when it opened in January, with Maman and Drinking Pig BBQ landing since. It's a real story, and if you like walking to dinner, it's worth knowing.

But if your address sits closer to the sand, that isn't actually the story that changed your stretch of the avenue. Down at the ocean end, where Atlantic meets A1A, a single property spent the better part of the past two years absorbing a renovation large enough to reshape what "going out" means for anyone who lives within walking distance of the water. The dining roundups mention it in passing, usually as one line about a new steakhouse. It deserves more than that.

One Address, Four New Rooms

The Seagate Hotel, Golf & Beach Club sits at 1000 East Atlantic Avenue and markets private beach access as part of the stay. Under Turnberry, the same operator behind Aventura Mall and the JW Marriott Nashville, the property completed a $55 million renovation and joined Marriott's Autograph Collection this past November. The 157 rooms and suites were redone by design firm Watts & Dray in sand-hued limewash and Dutch blue, with hand-painted Delft tiles brought in from Amsterdam and custom rugs by Marc Phillips.

None of that changes your Tuesday night. What changes your Tuesday night is that the renovation didn't produce one new restaurant. It produced four.

• Bourbon Steak, chef Michael Mina's steakhouse, opened in March of last year in the space that used to be the Atlantic Grille, arriving as the project's anchor tenant months before the rest of the renovation wrapped. It's Mina's first restaurant in Palm Beach County.
• Mr. Seas took over as the hotel's casual beachfront dining room, serving coastal fare with patio seating steps from the sand.
• Venetian Street became the hotel bar, built around Italian-inspired small plates and cocktails.
• The Gate Café now handles coffee and pastries for anyone who wants breakfast without a reservation.

That's four dining rooms tied to one renovation, all inside a building most residents have walked past for years without a second look. The Sundy Village restaurants have arrived as a rolling series of separate leases signed by separate operators over more than a year. This was one address absorbing an entire dining program as part of a single capital project, with Bourbon Steak's dining room built out at 6,000 square feet by Martin Brudnizki's studio, complete with a 34-seat bar and a private room for 24. Executive chef Pablo Valencia runs the kitchen. The menu keeps Mina's signature move of skipping the bread basket for a trio of duck fat fries, and the steaks get the treatment Mina described around the opening:

"All of the steaks are slow poached in butter and then finished on a 900-degree wood-fired grill."

If you've lived here long enough to remember when the Atlantic Grille was just the hotel restaurant you never quite got around to trying, this is worth noticing. It isn't the hotel restaurant anymore. It's a James Beard Award winner's first stake in this county, and it happened on your block.

The Amenities the Restaurant Roundups Skip

Every article about the Seagate mentions Bourbon Steak. Almost none mention what else came with the renovation, and those additions matter more if you're the kind of resident who treats the hotel as a neighbor rather than a destination.

The property now runs a 44-slip marina through its Seagate Yacht Club, useful if you keep a boat on the Intracoastal and have been routing around to reach open water. The 18-hole course got a redesign from golf architect J. Drew Rogers, and the property added tennis and pickleball courts to the recreation mix. In May 2026, the Seagate Spa launched a new treatment menu built with Naturopathica, a skincare and wellness brand founded in 1995 and known for botanical-based formulas.

None of this requires a room key if you live close enough to use it as a member or a walk-in guest. What it does mean is that the same renovation cycle that brought in a Michelin-pedigreed chef also left the property with a marina, a redesigned course, and, as of this spring, a new spa partnership. That's a different kind of growth than a new bagel shop opening in Pineapple Grove, and it's the kind that doesn't show up in a listicle about "14 new restaurants."

The Corner Still Belongs to Boston's

None of this displaced what was already there. Across Ocean Boulevard, Boston's on the Beach has been running its lower-deck sports bar and upstairs dining room for 45 years, and it isn't going anywhere. The ground floor still does the version of Delray that predates the renovation cycle entirely: fried shrimp baskets, a bar crowd watching Patriots games that aren't on local TV, live music most nights of the week. Upstairs, the space once known as the Upper Deck now runs as 50 Ocean, with a more composed New England menu built around steamed lobster and grilled swordfish. Next door, Sandbar keeps the tiki end of the block going with frozen drinks and a four-year run under its belt.

If you've worried that a $55 million hotel renovation just up the street might swallow the casual, unpretentious version of this neighborhood, the answer so far is that it hasn't. The two versions of this stretch, resort-grade and beach-shack, are running in parallel, not competing for the same table.

The New Neighbor at Atlantic and A1A

One other change is worth noting right at the corner where Atlantic Avenue meets A1A, in the space that used to be a BurgerFi. Pura Vida has taken over that spot, and its casual, health-forward menu gives the corner something it didn't have before: a fast, easy stop for anyone walking to or from the beach who wants something lighter than a fried shrimp basket or a 22-ounce ribeye.

It's a small addition next to a nine-figure hotel renovation, but it's the one that changes a daily routine rather than an occasional splurge. If your weekend walk to the sand runs through that intersection, you now have a reason to slow down there that wasn't available when the corner still belonged to a burger chain.

What Actually Changed on Your Block

The story most sites are telling about Delray Beach this year is a westward one: new restaurants filling in around Sundy Village, the center of gravity for reservations shifting toward Swinton Avenue. That's a real trend, and it's worth knowing if downtown dining is part of your routine.

But if your block is the one closer to the water, the last two years looked different. It wasn't defined by a series of new leases signing on a rolling basis. It was defined by one property that spent that stretch absorbing a $55 million renovation, landing a chef with a national reputation, finishing out its guest rooms under a global hotel flag, and, most recently, adding a spa partnership this spring, all while the beach-shack institutions nearby kept doing exactly what they've always done. That's not a restaurant boom. It's a single, concentrated reinvestment in the part of Atlantic Avenue that ends at the ocean, and it happened at the same address the whole time.

If you're already living in this pocket of Delray Beach, near enough to Atlantic and A1A to notice these things on foot, this stretch gave the ocean end of the avenue its own chapter, distinct from whatever is filling in around Sundy Village. If you're weighing what it's like to actually live somewhere so close to that kind of change, A+ Realtor can walk you through what homes near this stretch of the coast look like right now, and what it's actually like to have a marina, a redesigned course, and a James Beard chef's steakhouse inside your own walking radius.