The Restaurants at Sundy Village Aren't Coming. They're Already Open

In its coverage of a recent city event, The Coastal Star quoted Mayor Tom Carney describing the cluster of once-crumbling structures at Atlantic and Swinton: "Most of you remember what these were like before. 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. Sundy Village has had a working restaurant since January, even if the corner may still look like a construction site to some passersby.

A phased rollout

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. The staggered openings may help explain why the west side of Swinton still reads as unfinished to some visitors.

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, so the dining venues have opened on a different schedule from the offices.

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 not yet 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

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.

The refinancing replaces the construction loan with a larger, longer-term facility. For residents, the practical read is simple: it's an operating campus with paying tenants.

The 1902 Sundy House is central to the project's next phase. 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 has quietly become a place with an open bar tab, a nightly sushi counter, and an ice cream line as its restaurants have opened in stages.

With Double Knot open since June, Sundy Village offers another option for dinner in Delray Beach.

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.