Longbeach Village's Restaurant Growth and Whitney's Expansion Proposal
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Walk the block at Broadway Street and Gulf of Mexico Drive on a Wednesday evening and you'll find half the new activity closed. Lo' Key Island Grille, the seafood-and-wings spot that opened at 5620 Gulf of Mexico Drive, takes Wednesdays off. Fifty feet away, Guppy's Good Times is still slinging cheesesteaks on Liscio's rolls to a dining room full of transplanted Eagles fans. A few blocks north, at the corner where a gas station sat empty for years, Whitney's is filing paperwork with the town that could nearly double how many people it can seat.
Longtime residents of what's still called Longbeach Village, the historic north-end pocket clustered around Broadway near the Longboat Pass Bridge, have seen restaurant growth on the north end before.
As Sarasota Magazine reported, Whitney's sits at 6990 Gulf of Mexico Drive, on the site of a defunct 1950s service station. Before it became a restaurant, that corner was slated to become a 120-room, three-story hotel. Village residents fought the proposal in 2016 and won. What replaced it was a rehabbed bodega-and-burger spot. In its account, owner James Brearley described it as something meant to fit "the fabric of the north end."
Two doors down on Broadway Street, Mar Vista Dockside Restaurant & Pub occupies a building that dates to 1913, one of the dozen oldest surviving structures on Longboat Key and one of the few spared when a 1921 hurricane leveled much of the island. Owner Ed Chiles put roughly $2 million into renovating and expanding it in 2019, the same year Shore opened right next door.
As Sarasota Magazine reported, a community leader at the time described hearing car doors lock and unlock after the dinner rush. The Village now runs a resident parking permit system that reserves public spaces for residents and routes restaurant staff and guests into the businesses' own lots. It also tightened its stance on short-term rentals, capping most stays at a minimum of three months, no more than once a year.
As of late July 2026, Whitney's owners have submitted a zoning map amendment to the town's Planning and Zoning Department covering the former office building next door at 6960 Gulf of Mexico Drive. The application proposes demolishing that building to make room for an outdoor deck under a slatted canopy, expanding the restaurant's total capacity to 200 diners. Attached to the seating expansion is 1,370 square feet of new construction, a commissary kitchen, storage and cooler space, and restrooms.
That's a meaningfully larger footprint than the original Whitney's, which opened in 2020 as a casual bodega serving tacos, burgers and its signature octopus plate a few hours a day. Nothing about the application has been approved yet. It's a filing, not a groundbreaking, which means the Village is at the same point in the cycle it was in sometime before 2019: a proposal is on the table, and the resident response to it isn't written yet.
While Whitney's works through the approval process, the two newest additions to the Village corridor are already serving dinner most nights:
That's a genuinely new cluster of options in a part of the island that, historically, hasn't had much dining variety within walking distance. Visitors staying a full week on the north end have long been advised that by day three they're driving mid-key or further south for a different restaurant. Two new kitchens opening within a few doors of each other changes that math for the people who live here full time, not just the people passing through for a week.
More places to eat mean less need to drive south for dinner. That parking history is part of the backdrop for Whitney's proposal.
Whitney's proposed expansion is a different scale than a two-restaurant reno. Whether the corner can accommodate 200 diners instead of the current smaller count is an open question for the town's review process.
For residents weighing whether the new options are worth the drive down Gulf of Mexico Drive, the north end still has one advantage the rest of the island doesn't advertise as heavily: Joan M. Durante Park, a 32-acre bayfront site about two miles south of the Village, with a roughly 1.2-mile boardwalk loop through mangrove wetlands and coastal hammock forest. It's free, open dawn to dusk, and dog-friendly on a leash, which makes it a natural stop before or after a dinner run to the new spots on Broadway. The paths are crushed shell rather than pavement, better suited to walking than biking, and the boardwalk sections offer some of the clearest Sarasota Bay views on this stretch of the island.
None of this changes what's actually happening on the Village corner. Longbeach Village has seen a hotel proposal in 2016, restaurant growth in 2019, and now Whitney's expansion application. Guppy's and Lo' Key are open, while Whitney's application remains under review.
If you're weighing what a changing corner like this means for property values, timing, or your own plans on Longboat Key, the team at VanDuren Group tracks these shifts block by block, not just island-wide. Request your white-glove consultation to talk through what's actually happening where you live.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
Real Estate Professional
Sheryl VanDuren is a top luxury real estate specialist serving Wellen Park, Lakewood Ranch, and Sarasota’s surrounding areas. With eight years of experience and recognition among Coldwell Banker's Top 3% Global Realtors, she provides expert guidance and a stress-free buying or selling experience. Her background in home staging and deep local knowledge make her a trusted resource for clients. When not helping buyers and sellers, she enjoys spin biking, interior design, and community involvement.
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