On June 14, food trucks lined the promenade along Van Wezel Way while a fan zone filled in around the Ibis Playground and Sarasota Paradise players signed autographs before a jumbotron lit up for the opening night of a free World Cup watch party series. Kids ran laps around the mangrove walk between matches. By July 19, the same lawn filled again for the final, broadcast at no charge on a stadium-quality screen while the real match played out more than a thousand miles away. Nobody needed a ticket. Nobody needed to know how any of it actually gets paid for.
That part is worth understanding anyway. The version of The Bay everyone spent the summer enjoying, the mangrove walk, the beach, the Ibis Playground, the shade structures along the promenade, is largely finished business. The version still on paper, including a performing arts center and two more restaurants along a brand new town square, rides on a funding mechanism that a single vote in Tallahassee could redirect somewhere else entirely.
Three Phases Down, the Fourth Is Still a Concept
The Bay opened its first ten acres in October 2022: the mangrove walk with its kayak launch, the beach, the Ibis Playground, the event lawn, the spiral shade structure, and the Nest Café. In 2025 the Cultural District Promenade followed, a 1,000-foot walkway lined with Royal Palms that ties together three Sarasota landmarks, the Blue Pagoda, the Chidsey Library, and the Municipal Auditorium. Phase 2, a $65 million, fourteen-acre expansion that includes a Resilient Shoreline along the park's western edge, is fully funded and was expected to wrap sometime this year.
Phase 3 is where the picture changes. The Bay Park Conservancy revealed its concepts for this final stretch in May 2026, and it is the most ambitious piece of the plan yet: a new town square, three restaurants, and a proposed performing arts center.
| Phase | Status as of mid-2026 | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Complete since October 2022 | Mangrove walk, kayak launch, beach, Ibis Playground, event lawn, Nest Café |
| Cultural District Promenade | Opened 2025 | 1,000-foot walkway linking the Blue Pagoda, Chidsey Library, and Municipal Auditorium |
| Phase 2 | Fully funded, expected to finish this year | 14 acres, including the Resilient Shoreline |
| Phase 3 | Concepts revealed May 2026 | The Plaza town square, three restaurants, a proposed Sarasota Performing Arts Center |
The Plaza Is Reclaiming a Name From 1964
The new town square, set along Van Wezel Way between the Municipal Auditorium and the Chidsey Library, is scheduled to open this October. Instead of picking something new, the Bay Park Conservancy is going back to a name Sarasota already gave that exact patch of ground more than sixty years ago. City staffer Shaheen told commissioners this spring that in April 1964, then-mayor Herschel Mayo dedicated the same land as Plaza de Santo Domingo, honoring Sarasota's sister-city relationship with the Dominican capital. Mayo, in Shaheen's retelling, called it "the very hub of our civic life." The new square will go by the simpler The Plaza, a large shade structure built for gathering, performances, and rentals.
One Familiar Name Is Already Attached to the Restaurants
The first of Phase 3's three planned restaurants is set to open in fall 2027, designed by Sweet Sparkman Architecture, the same Sarasota firm that just picked up a 2026 AIA Florida Design Honor Award for its rehabilitation of the Chidsey Library. The restaurant will be run by Venice Pier Group, the family operation already behind Fins at Sharky's and Sharky's on the Pier in Venice, along with the concessions stand at Siesta Key Beach Pavilion. Two more restaurants are planned within what is currently an eight-acre parking lot, most of which will be converted into green space with graduated elevations built for flood resilience rather than more asphalt.
The performing arts center is the piece with no groundbreaking date attached. It would be built and operated by the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation, and Bay Park Conservancy founding CEO AG Lafley has been planning each phase, in his words, like layers of a cake, with this one sitting on top. He's called the site itself "one of a kind."
What Nobody Was Talking About at the Watch Party
Here is the part that doesn't show up on a fan zone banner. The Bay's roughly $175 to $200 million total build, spread across four or more phases, is a public-private arrangement. Government contributions cover half of that through revenue generated by The Bay's own tax increment financing district, with Sarasota County alone committed to a 25 percent share of capital costs from that same TIF revenue.
That commitment is not locked in by anything beyond the county's current policy. According to Your Observer's May 2026 reporting, if Florida lawmakers pass property tax reform, Sarasota County has the option to redirect The Bay's TIF district revenue into its general fund instead of continuing to put that money toward the park's capital projects. As of that reporting, no special legislative session on tax reform had been scheduled, and the window to add a statewide referendum question to the November ballot was closing. The Plaza and the first restaurant are moving forward regardless. The performing arts center and the rest of Phase 3's build-out are the pieces most exposed if that county contribution gets rerouted.
None of this touches the parts of the park that are already open and free every day. It does mean the sections everyone is currently waiting on, the ones with actual opening dates attached, are sitting downstream of a state tax debate that has nothing to do with parks at all.
The Number That Shows This Is Landing
By September 2024, roughly two years after Phase 1 opened, The Bay had logged about 600,000 visits. By May 18, 2026, less than two years later, that number had reached 1.15 million. Usage nearly doubled in a period shorter than the gap between the park's opening and its first big milestone. For a city with a population of 58,000, that's not a park that plateaued after the novelty wore off. It's one where the crowd kept growing right as the most expensive, least funded phase of the plan came into view.
What to Actually Watch This Fall
A few dates and decisions are worth keeping on your radar if you spend any time at The Bay:
- October 2026 – The Plaza is scheduled to open along Van Wezel Way, carrying its reclaimed 1964 name.
- Late 2026 – Whether the Florida Legislature calls a special session on property tax reform, or whether a referendum question makes the November ballot, will shape how much of Phase 3 actually gets built.
- Fall 2027 – The first Venice Pier Group restaurant, designed by Sweet Sparkman Architecture, is set to open.
None of that changes what's free and open right now. The mangrove walk, the beach, the Ibis Playground, and the Nest Café aren't going anywhere. What's genuinely uncertain is whether the park you'll be visiting in five years looks like the full concept the Conservancy unveiled in May, or a version that quietly stalls out at The Plaza.
If you're the kind of Sarasota resident who already treats The Bay like an extension of your own backyard, that's worth knowing before the next round of city commission meetings makes the local news. Susan Phelps has watched this stretch of the bayfront grow for years, and it's exactly the kind of local detail she likes sharing with neighbors, whether or not you're in the market for anything at all.
