"Most of you remember what these were like before," Mayor Tom Carney told a crowd at a recent city event, describing the cluster of once-crumbling structures at Atlantic and Swinton. "It's been a great, positive development for that part of Swinton and that part of the city."
He was talking about buildings that have already reopened. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because if you asked most Delray Beach residents what's happening at that corner right now, a lot of them would still describe a construction site. They'd be wrong. Sundy Village has had a working restaurant since January.
The rollout nobody watched happen all at once
Sundy Village was never designed to open like a ribbon-cutting. It was designed to open like a subscription service, one tenant at a time, over the better part of two years. That pacing is the whole reason the west side of Swinton still reads as unfinished to people who haven't driven past it lately.
The seven-acre campus, developed by Pebb Capital and designed by Gensler, delivered its first phase in September 2025: 100,000 square feet of Class A office space, 30,000 square feet of retail and dining, and 268 underground parking spaces, according to Florida YIMBY's coverage of the certificate of occupancy. The office side leased up fast, hitting roughly 88 percent almost immediately. Restaurants take longer than office space to go from signed lease to open door, and that lag is exactly what's created the gap between what the campus actually is and what most residents think it is.
Barcelona Wine Bar broke that silence first, opening on Jan. 17, 2026, with Spanish tapas and a wine list that runs more than 400 bottles, roughly 40 of them by the glass, an unusually deep pour list for a restaurant barely a year old. Van Leeuwen Ice Cream opened quietly in the same stretch. Then, in June 2026, Double Knot arrived, the Japanese izakaya from chef Michael Schulson's Schulson Collective, known for its raw bar and hot kitchen format in Philadelphia and Wynwood.
That's three operating businesses. Not a rendering, not a groundbreaking photo, three places you can walk into tonight.
What's actually running right now
| Business | Status as of September 2026 | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Barcelona Wine Bar | Open since Jan. 17, 2026 | Spanish tapas, 400+ bottle wine list |
| Van Leeuwen Ice Cream | Open | Scoop shop |
| Double Knot | Open since June 2026 | Japanese izakaya, raw bar and robatayaki |
| Drinking Pig BBQ | Targeting this month | Miami-rooted barbecue with Caribbean and Asian sides |
| Maman | No confirmed date | French cafe in a converted cottage |
| Delray Beach Craft Brewing | No confirmed date | Independent brewery inside the restored Cathcart House |
| Sundy House (hotel and restaurant) | Phase Two, late 2026 to early 2027 | 1902 landmark, National Register since 1992 |
Drinking Pig BBQ is the next name to watch. Chef Raheem Sealey built the concept as a pandemic pop-up in North Miami-Dade before opening a brick-and-mortar in Coconut Grove, and reporting earlier this year had the Sundy Village location aiming for a September opening. If that holds, it becomes the fourth operating tenant in a campus a lot of neighbors still describe as "the thing they're building."
Maman and Delray Beach Craft Brewing are the two without a public date yet. Maman is going into what its founder described as a converted cottage, complete with Martha Stewart collaboration items on the menu. The brewery is taking over the restored Cathcart House, one of the historic Swinton Avenue homes Pebb Capital preserved instead of tearing down. Neither has confirmed a month.
Why this isn't a speculative project anymore
Here's the part that separates Sundy Village from a lot of downtown proposals that stall out: the money behind it just got more permanent, not less. Pebb Capital secured a $223 million refinancing for the project, according to The Real Deal, with JPMorgan Chase and Hudson Bay Capital providing the loan and Walker & Dunlop arranging it. That loan replaces a $173 million construction loan the company took out back in 2023.
Refinancing a construction loan into a larger, longer-term facility is usually a sign that a project has moved past the building phase and into the stabilized-income phase, the kind of move lenders only make once leasing and revenue justify it. For residents, the practical read is simple: this isn't a half-finished spec project waiting to see if it pencils out. It's an operating campus with paying tenants, and the fact that a bigger loan replaced the construction financing means the people who actually have money on the line expect the rest of the lineup to fill in.
The 1902 Sundy House sits at the center of that bet. Named for Delray's first mayor, John Sundy, the building is closed for a full restoration and is set to anchor Phase Two as a reopened hotel and restaurant. Full campus completion, Sundy House included, is projected for late 2026 to early 2027 across every source tracking the project.
What never stopped east of Swinton
None of this paused what was already working on the other side of the street. Old School Square's 12th Annual Summer GreenMarket ran every Saturday from May 30 through July 25, 2026, and wrapped for the season on its normal schedule, well before Sundy Village's newer restaurants had a chance to pull any of that foot traffic away. Art & Jazz on the Avenue kept its usual three-times-a-year rhythm too, with dates already run in February and May and a third stop scheduled for later in the year.
The established dining strip east of Swinton, places like Rocco's Tacos & Tequila Bar, Tropical Smokehouse, Gabriella's, and Deck 84, which remains the only restaurant in Delray Beach offering true dock-and-dine access for boaters coming in off the Intracoastal, kept doing exactly what it's always done. Nobody had to choose a side. Downtown Delray now has two places pulling people in instead of one, and they're pulling from the same pool of residents rather than competing for a shrinking one.
The actual shift
The story here isn't that a new development is bringing restaurants to Delray Beach. Developments do that constantly, and most of those stories are interchangeable. The story is that the corner most residents have only ever seen through a windshield has quietly become a place with an open bar tab, a nightly sushi counter, and an ice cream line, and the rollout was slow enough that the neighborhood hasn't updated its mental map yet.
If you haven't crossed Swinton for dinner since Double Knot opened its doors in June, you're still eating in the old Delray. The corner isn't waiting on you. It's already seated a few tables.
Understanding how a project like this actually changes the rhythm of a neighborhood, not just its skyline, is the kind of read that only comes from tracking it as it happens rather than at the ribbon cutting. If you're weighing a move on either side of Swinton Avenue, or you're already here and want a second opinion on what a corner like this does to daily life nearby, Mari Juliette is a phone call away.
