If you drove Collins Avenue in January and again in July, you saw two different streets. The old Newport Beachside sign is gone. A new resort opened in its footprint on February 4. The pier at the end of Sunny Isles Beach Boulevard is walkable again. Il Mulino's dining room looks nothing like it did last winter. And on the block where the low-slung 1951 Miami Beach Club still stands, the City Commission has already signed off on the tallest tower Sunny Isles has ever entitled.
Read those updates as a list and they look like unrelated news. They aren't. The pattern worth naming is this: the ground-floor life of Sunny Isles Beach, the restaurants residents actually walk to, is being absorbed into the towers and resorts above them. The independent storefront is getting rarer. The branded lobby restaurant is getting more common. That shift is the story of 2026 on this stretch of coast, and it's the frame worth carrying into every new opening you read about for the rest of the year.
The Newport Block Is a Resort Again
The most visible change on the strand is a full-block reset at the old Newport Beachside site. The Sunny, formerly the Newport Beachside Hotel & Resort, was transformed by HB Capital Group and opened its doors on February 4, 2026. The property now offers 339 guest rooms, six food and beverage outlets, a fitness center, spa and salon, an ocean-front pool with tiki bar and fire pits, a beach club, and over 22,000 square feet of event space.
Two of those F&B outlets matter for residents, not tourists. The Pier is billed as the only pier restaurant in Miami directly on top of the ocean, and VIVA! is a Mexican-American concept by Ray Garcia. The Pier is the interesting one because it's tied to a piece of public infrastructure that also came back this year. The Newport Fishing Pier recently celebrated its Grand Opening after a complete renovation and is now open for fishing and walking, with a lifeguard station at the park for swimmer safety during operational hours.
That means the walk you used to take from Sunny Isles Beach Boulevard out over the Atlantic now ends at a restaurant that belongs to a hotel. That is a different arrangement than a public pier with a snack bar. Whether the pier stays as accessible to residents on a Sunday afternoon as it was under the old configuration is the question worth tracking through the fall.
Il Mulino's Renovation, and What $49 Buys You Right Now
A block south at Acqualina, the fine-dining anchor of the last decade has reopened after work. Il Mulino New York at Acqualina unveiled a newly reimagined dining experience, with a refreshed dining room and bar, and a menu that welcomes new dishes alongside the Italian classics.
The price to test-drive the renovation is lower than most residents assume:
| Menu | Price | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Prix-fixe lunch, three courses | $49 per guest, Monday through Saturday from 11:30 AM until 3:30 PM, plus taxes and 18% gratuity | Ongoing |
| Taittinger Champagne Experience dinner | $140 per person, plus 20% gratuity and applicable taxes, available for lunch and dinner through July 31, 2026 | Ends July 31 |
The $49 lunch is the useful number. It puts a renovated oceanfront room at Acqualina inside the same weekday budget as a casual sit-down at Aventura Mall. If you were waiting for a reason to see the new dining room, that is it, and the Champagne pairing menu has a hard July deadline.
The Independents That Still Anchor the Strand
Not everything on Collins is inside a lobby. The independent operators still worth naming are the ones that opened recently enough to feel new to a resident and old enough to have worked out the kinks.
- La Cabrera, at the Sunny Isles Beach corner of the group's Miami footprint. The Argentinian steakhouse first arrived in Miami in 2022 and has expanded to three locations across the destination, with Sunny Isles Beach as the first. Chef Gastón Riveira, known as the "artist of the asado" in Argentine parrilla, brings classics like the Bife de Chorizo and Ojo de Bife along with a variety of chimichurris and pasta.
- Baku Cafe Bar & Restaurant, the Azerbaijani grill house. It blends the flavors of Azerbaijani cuisine with a contemporary twist and specializes in grilling meat, seafood, and vegetables over an open flame.
- Lentrecote, a first-location bistro built around a single steak-frites format. The concept grew out of a home recipe the owner developed for anniversaries, moved into retail sauce sales, and opened its first Sunny Isles Beach location after demand for the restaurant version became clear.
- Porterhouse Music Bar & Restaurant, at 17008 Collins Avenue. Open Sunday through Thursday from noon to 2 AM and Friday and Saturday until 5 AM, which is the late window Sunny Isles has historically been short on.
- Baires Grill, the neighborhood Argentine standby at 18090 Collins. A block from the beach, with lunch specials and half-off drinks during happy hour Monday through Friday from 4 to 7 PM, and hand-crafted cocktails inspired by the ocean.
Put those five next to The Sunny's six outlets and Bentley Residences' resident-only restaurant, and the balance sheet of the strand becomes readable. Roughly a dozen new seats worth talking about opened this year. More than half of them sit inside a hotel or a condo tower.
The Cranes You'll See on Every Sunset Walk
The skyline is doing a version of the same thing the dining scene is doing, only slower and more permanent. Two projects are the ones to know.
Bentley Residences is no longer a rendering. Construction went vertical on Bentley Residences Miami on June 4, 2026, a 62-story luxury residential tower designed by Sieger Suarez Architects in collaboration with Bentley Motors and developed by Dezer Development, with the 716-foot structure set to yield 216 condominium residences with private in-unit sky garages accessed by the patented Dezervator vehicle elevator system. The site is 18401 Collins Avenue, between Turnberry Ocean Club Residences to the north and Sahara Beach Club Condo to the south. Amenities will include Proper English by Todd English, a private restaurant concept by the four-time James Beard Award-winning chef. That restaurant is not for you unless you own in the building, which is the point of the trend line.
The taller headline is farther north. The Sunny Isles Beach City Commission approved a 62-story oceanfront condominium tower planned at 19051 Collins Avenue, developed by The Related Group in partnership with Dezer Development and BH Group. At its proposed height, the tower would exceed the 672-foot Estates at Acqualina and the 750-foot St. Regis Residences currently under construction, becoming the tallest building in Sunny Isles Beach. The approval allows for redevelopment of the roughly 2-acre oceanfront parcel currently occupied by the Miami Beach Club, a two-story, 108-unit residential building originally completed in 1951, which the development group acquired in 2025 for approximately $131.8 million.
The developer framed the Bentley milestone this way:
"Going vertical is a meaningful milestone for Bentley Residences Miami and a testament to the strength of our vision and execution. As the tower rises, we look forward to delivering a truly one-of-a-kind residential experience that reflects the innovation and craftsmanship synonymous with the Bentley brand, while further elevating Sunny Isles Beach as a premier global destination for luxury living," said Gil Dezer, President of Dezer Development.
Read that alongside the 19051 Collins numbers and you get a working definition of what Sunny Isles is turning into. Under current zoning, the site permits a maximum density of 50 units per acre, and to achieve the proposed density of approximately 73 units per acre the development team is seeking additional floor area through the purchase of transfer of development rights and floor area ratio bonuses, with the application listing payments of approximately $15.12 million for TDRs and $14.49 million for FAR bonuses. The upfront cost of building above zoning is being priced in. That cost gets recovered upstairs, which is why the ground floor of these towers is increasingly private, branded, and expensive.
A Resident's Short List for the Rest of the Summer
- Walk out on the reopened Newport Pier before it starts feeling like a resort amenity by default.
- Book the $49 Il Mulino lunch on a weekday before the Champagne pairing menu ends July 31.
- Try Lentrecote or Baku Cafe once each, so your independent-restaurant memory of Sunny Isles has current data points, not 2022 ones.
- Watch the fence line at 19051 Collins. The 1951 Miami Beach Club is still standing. Once it isn't, the character of that block changes for a decade.
What This Means If You Actually Live Here
The information that matters isn't whether the neighborhood is getting fancier. It has been getting fancier since the Trump towers went up. The information that matters is where the new fanciness lands. In 2026 it lands upstairs, inside hospitality brands and inside condos. The public-facing street level is thinner than it looks, which is why the handful of independents that opened in the last two years are worth supporting if you want them around in the next two.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own address, whether you own in one of the delivered towers or you're watching the pre-construction pipeline from the sidelines, Sergey Shulga tracks the Sunny Isles Beach market building by building, including delivered inventory at the Ritz-Carlton Residences and the pre-construction cycle at Bentley Residences and St. Regis. Schedule a consultation when you want a read that goes past the press releases.
