Walk the four blocks between 93rd and 97th Streets on a Tuesday afternoon and the block reads differently than it did a year ago. A pottery studio has taken a storefront that sat quiet through most of 2024. A kosher burger counter has opened doors that used to belong to a shuttered café. Paper signs on another window promise sixteen frozen yogurt handles by year-end. The oceanfront gets the magazine coverage in Surfside, but the town's small commercial spine is where the year's story is actually being written.
The Block That Used To Empty Out
Surfside's downtown is not large. The town covers 0.564 square miles, and its walkable core runs a few blocks of Harding Avenue behind a single row of oceanfront condominiums on Collins. For years the arithmetic of that geography worked against the street. Residents strolled to a handful of loyal restaurants and a few long-tenured shops, then went home. Bal Harbour absorbed the luxury spending north of 96th. North Beach absorbed the late-night energy south of 88th. Harding was the middle.
The middle is filling in. Three new tenants have taken storefronts on the same stretch inside the past year, the town's Resort Tax Board has expanded its 2026 block-party calendar into a themed monthly series, and the Four Seasons hotel campus on Collins is drawing a different kind of evening crowd back across A1A. None of these is a headline on its own. Together they change the arithmetic of a resident's week.
Three New Doors
The clearest signal is at street level. Bibi's, a kosher burger counter with a small run of house burgers and counter seating for solo diners, opened on Harding Avenue in the past few months. A block north, PotterMe, a paint-your-own-pottery studio launched by local artist Jenna Helfman, has taken 9484 Harding Avenue and is programming ceramics classes for kids and adults out of a storefront that had previously been retail. And 16 Handles, the New York self-serve frozen yogurt brand founded in 2008 in the East Village, has filed permits with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation for a shop at 9509 Harding Avenue, with an opening targeted by the end of the year.
Read the three together and the pattern is not "trendy chains arriving in Surfside." It is closer to the opposite. A family-run kosher counter, a solo artist's studio, and a two-decade-old regional frozen-yogurt brand are all placing bets on a four-block stretch inside twelve months. That is the profile of a downtown that has crossed some quiet threshold in foot traffic.
A tell for a maturing walkable street is when the new tenants skew toward daytime and family use rather than nightlife. Surfside's three most recent additions all open before noon.
The Constants That Made Room For Them
New arrivals only work when the neighbors already drawing traffic keep pulling. Harding Avenue has an unusually long bench of long-tenured shops for a block this size, and the roll call matters because it explains why the new tenants signed leases here rather than on Collins.
| Storefront | Address | On Harding since |
|---|---|---|
| Jewelers Choice, Inc. | 9501 Harding Ave | 1976 |
| Oberlé Opticians | Harding Ave | 1977 |
| Cine Citta Cafe | Harding Ave | Over a decade |
| Cafe Ragazzi | 9500 Harding Ave | Longstanding |
| Miami Beach Chocolates | 9433 Harding Ave | Longstanding |
| Josh's Deli | Harding Ave | Longstanding, Michelin-rated |
| Liborio Cigar & Tobacco | Harding Ave | Decades |
Josh's Deli is the one to watch if you want to understand why the block has energy. It earned a Michelin recognition on a menu of traditional Jewish recipes reimagined with a modern hand, and it did that on a residential street with no oceanfront view and modest signage. That combination, a national-caliber kitchen inside a neighborhood storefront, is the archetype the new arrivals appear to be underwriting.
Cine Citta Cafe has been Surfside's kosher-dairy Italian option for more than a decade, with a brick-oven pizza program and a plated dining-room experience uncommon at the price point. Cafe Ragazzi at 9500 Harding has held its ground next door. Miami Beach Chocolates at 9433 keeps a late Saturday-night window that most neighboring shops do not. Oberlé Opticians has been carrying Dita, Thom Browne, Cartier, and Chopard eyewear from the same block since Bernie Oberlander opened the shop in 1977. These are not businesses waiting to be discovered. They are the reason the new tenants believe the foot traffic is durable.
Third Thursdays, Cruising The Globe
The other structural change this summer is programming. The Surfside Resort Tax Board's 2026 Third Thursdays block-party series carries a "Cruising the Globe" theme, staged monthly at 93rd Street and Harding Avenue outside Town Hall from 6 to 9 p.m. The series has been running under various themes since 2008, but the 2026 edition doubles down on the format that has worked, live music, kids' activities, vendor booths, and a rotating cultural motif that gives each month its own character.
Two things about the calendar are worth noticing if you live here. First, Third Thursdays are the reason most of the new tenants extended evening hours through the summer. A pottery studio does not stay open until nine on a weeknight unless there is a crowd on the sidewalk. Second, the Resort Tax Board has stacked additional programming around the Thursday anchor. The Summer Sundays series returned this year with a trio of beach-adjacent afternoons blending food, music, and family programming. And on Sunday, November 16, the Surfside Community Center will host Singerfest, a gathering marking the birth month of Nobel laureate and former Surfside resident Isaac Bashevis Singer with readings and community conversation about his work.
Add it up and the town is programming roughly one major community event a month, most of them within a five-minute walk of the new storefronts. That is what a maturing downtown calendar looks like.
The Collins Avenue Counterweight
The Harding story is the interesting one this year, but the Collins Avenue story has not gone quiet. The Surf Club Restaurant, Chef Thomas Keller's first Florida venture, continues to run inside the historic 1930 clubhouse at 9101 Collins Avenue, alongside Lido at The Surf Club, the Four Seasons hotel campus's Italian coastal room helmed by Florence native Chef Marco Calenzo, and the Champagne Bar staged inside what was once the Surf Club's ballroom. Hikari Miami has held its lane as a high-end kosher Japanese tasting-menu room. Together they form the ocean-side counterweight to the Harding storefronts, and they explain why the block back-of-house has finally hit the density needed to support a pottery studio and a burger counter three blocks inland.
A Resident's August, In Order
Here is what a plausible week looks like right now if you live in one of the buildings between 88th and 96th.
- Monday morning. Coffee and a pastry at one of the Harding cafés, then a walk down 93rd Street past the Turtle Walk sculptures, eighteen loggerhead-inspired pieces painted by South Florida artists between Collins and Harding.
- Tuesday lunch. Josh's Deli, sitting outside if the wind is off the water.
- Wednesday evening. A pottery class at PotterMe on 9484 Harding, which is the kind of activity that did not exist here twelve months ago.
- Third Thursday. 93rd and Harding at Town Hall, 6 to 9 p.m., whichever globe-hopping theme the Resort Tax Board has queued up for the month.
- Friday dinner. Cine Citta or Cafe Ragazzi if you want the block, Lido or the Surf Club Restaurant if you want the ocean.
- Saturday late. Miami Beach Chocolates at 9433 Harding keeps the door open into the late hours on Saturday nights.
- Sunday afternoon. Summer Sundays on the beach access if the series is running, or the oceanfront walking path north to Bal Harbour and back.
Nothing on that list is aspirational. All of it fits inside a fifteen-minute walk from most Surfside buildings.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The interesting question for residents is not which new store to try first. It is whether the block has enough momentum to keep adding tenants at this pace into 2027. The evidence on the ground suggests yes. Family-oriented daytime uses tend to stack, and Surfside's downtown now has three of them opening in the same year. The Resort Tax Board has built a monthly programming calendar that puts a crowd on Harding once a month by design. And the Four Seasons and Surf Club Restaurant continue to feed foot traffic across A1A most evenings. A pedestrian street that has both destination dining on Collins and daily-use retail on Harding is a rare thing in Miami-Dade, and Surfside is closer to having one than it has been in years.
If you are thinking about your own place in Surfside's next chapter, whether that is a Collins-facing condo above the shops or a residential block west of Harding, Mick Duchon and the Carmenate / Duchon team at The Corcoran Group are available for a private consultation.
