Last spring, Julian Gheiler sold pastries from a Sunday kiosk on the sidewalk outside Over Under. On Friday, Aug. 7, he opened Flagler St. Bakery in a permanent space at 12 NE First Ave., and he told Miami New Times the shop had been "slammed almost every day since." His first permanent counter sits less than a block off the street he started on.
That short move is how most of Flagler's new businesses are getting here. The restaurants arriving on Miami's original Main Street aren't outside chains drawn in by fresh brick pavers. Most began as pop-ups at Over Under and Tâm Tâm, two places that stayed open through a decade of construction, and then moved into storefronts of their own a few doors away.
The street that finally reopened
The Miami Herald summed up the end of the project in August with a single word: "Mostly." Work started in 2016 on a plan that was supposed to take two years. Since then the city fired a contractor, changed the design, lost time to the pandemic and got into a second contractor dispute. The cost grew from $13 million to $32 million. Earlier this year, Mayor Eileen Higgins and City Manager James Reyes hired subcontractors directly to finish enough work to reopen all five blocks, from Biscayne Boulevard to the Dade County Courthouse at West First Avenue, for the first time in six years.
Some businesses didn't make it through the construction years. As the Herald reported, losing foot traffic right after the pandemic shutdowns meant businesses "folded one after another." Two that held on were the bars Lost Boy Dry Goods and Over Under, both on the blocks that were finished first. Over Under is at 151 E. Flagler and Lost Boy is next door at 157. Many of the businesses opening now trace back to those two addresses and to Tâm Tâm.
Pop-ups that became storefronts
Here's where three of the newer openings started:
- Fratesi's Pizza, 69 E. Flagler St. Its pizza drew a following at pop-ups held at Over Under and Tâm Tâm, and it opened its first permanent location in summer 2025.
- Flagler St. Bakery, 12 NE First Ave. It ran as a Sunday pastry kiosk outside Over Under in spring 2026 and opened its own space on Aug. 7.
- Phở Nam, 270 E. Flagler St. This is the second restaurant from Tâm Tâm's chef Tam Pham and sommelier Harrison Ramhofer, and its grand opening was Sept. 3.
All three started by testing their food on a crowd already coming to the street, then signed leases a few doors away. That kind of slow, local growth is hard to plan from City Hall, and it's a big part of why the reopened street already feels lived in.
What the bakery makes
Gheiler bakes everything at the shop. His team says that makes it the only bakery in downtown Miami producing all of its bread and pastry from scratch. Pastries come out first thing in the morning, and sandwiches start after 10 a.m. Each pastry takes at least three days. The one he's proudest of is the medianoche croissant: ham, Swiss, roast pork, pickles and mustard folded into cross-laminated croissant dough. The case also holds a chocolate babka made with Nutella, a miso caramel bar, a labneh za'atar Danish, a tahini babka with white chocolate, cardamom and rose, an Earl Grey bun and ube butter mochi.
Two Vietnamese openings a few blocks apart
Phở Nam takes its cues from Saigon's old-school noodle shops. It serves pho with traditional Vietnamese dishes, specialty coffees and teas. A few blocks west, Sippin' on Saigon at 215 N. Miami Ave. was reported open by Sept. 11. It's a Vietnamese coffee shop that also serves banh mi, pho and spring rolls. A year ago, downtown's Flagler grid had Tâm Tâm. Now it has two more Vietnamese spots within an easy walk.
Why food is filling the street first
The Herald counted 13 businesses that opened this year or were about to open on Flagler and the side streets, plus seven more with signed leases. The examples it gave were a pizza restaurant, a cigar club, a wine shop, a French bakery, a contemporary art gallery and a pho spot. Food and drink make up most of that list, and the rules now help. A zoning change that came with the streetscape project means places serving alcohol on Flagler aren't subject to spacing restrictions, and they can put seating on the new, wider sidewalks along the whole street. The Downtown Development Authority also gave cash grants to help several new businesses open.
Terrell Fritz, longtime director of the Flagler Business Improvement District, described the shift this way:
"What our retail mix will be is going to evolve. Now we need to get to work and start filling the empty storefronts that remain."
The Herald noted that Flagler looks headed toward becoming an entertainment district rather than the shopping street it used to be, though Fritz hasn't ruled out some stores coming back. The newer non-restaurant tenants fit that same leisure mix:
- Backbone Wine Co., 29 E. Flagler St., an independently curated neighborhood wine shop.
- Cigar Club Miami, 106 NE 1st St., a cigar lounge with a full bar that opened to the public in February 2026.
- La Boulangerie Boul'Mich, a French bakery with a Latin twist, which the BID lists as open. The BID gives its address as 169 E. Flagler. The county tourism listing places it at 199 E. Flagler in the DuPont Building.
- Blind Pig Gallery, 243 E. Flagler St., a contemporary art gallery that has signed a lease. The BID lists it as new or opening soon, with no opening date announced.
What's still unfinished
The street is open, but some of the biggest decisions haven't been made. Here's where each stands as of early October:
| Open question | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Street surface | Brick pavers east of Miami Avenue, plain asphalt to the west. A $1 million state appropriation could pay to finish the brick or build a formal entrance to Flagler, but it requires matching funds and no decision has been made. |
| 48 E. Flagler | Moishe Mana's overnight demolition of condemned buildings next to the Metromover is still underway, and the new sidewalk there is still fenced off. Mana and the DDA plan a temporary soccer park on the site, with one regulation field and mini pitches. |
| Weekend street closures | Fourteen weekend closures cost more than $130,000, about 70% of it for police. The BID is trying to raise money to restart in late October. |
| Olympia Theater | Effectively closed. Miami Dade College and SLAM are planning a restoration estimated at $50 million, to happen within five years. |
Mana matters more to the street's future than any single tenant. After more than a decade of buying, he owns about 80 downtown properties, including much of Flagler. In March he bought the former SunTrust Bank tower at Flagler and Biscayne for $110 million. His Mona Lisa mural now looks down over East First Avenue. He has repainted his storefronts on the 100 block in colors taken from the painting and fitted them with smoky new glass, though the Herald reported most of those storefronts are still vacant. How fast those spaces fill will decide whether the pop-up pipeline keeps finding room on the blocks closest to Over Under and Lost Boy.
The Olympia used to help bring people downtown. In April, the Heritage Days on Flagler weekend was timed to the Miami Film Festival's opening at the theater. The plans for the restored theater include Miami Film Festival and Miami Book Fair programming, but Miami Today reported in September that the restoration is still years away.
This fall's calendar
Weekend closures were the biggest test of the new street so far. Starting in February, the BID and DDA ran Flagler Weekends with live music, Saturday green markets and Sunday vintage markets. During the FIFA Fan Festival, the DDA put a soccer pitch in the middle of Flagler and Lost Boy set up an air-conditioned pop-up tent. "All the bars and restaurants saw an enormous influx," Fritz told the Herald. The cost is the problem. A full winter season would run about $415,000.
The BID's own Weekends on Flagler page says it is looking for funding to bring the program back in late October 2026, with a proposed 24-weekend season running through April 2027. Vendor and program announcements are still to come. A Miami & Miami Beach listing shows a Saturday Green Market on the 200 block every week from Oct. 10 through Dec. 26, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the street closed to traffic. The BID's market pages still show only the season that ended in May, so it's best to treat the Saturday market as unconfirmed until the BID posts its fall schedule.
One date is set. The Miami Book Fair runs Nov. 15 to 22 at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus, 300 NE Second Ave., with the street fair Nov. 20 to 22. The campus is a short walk from Flagler St. Bakery at 12 NE First Ave. and from Phở Nam at 270 E. Flagler.
At Wolsen Real Estate, we keep track of how downtown streets like Flagler are changing, because what opens on the ground floor shapes daily life in the towers above it. If you're thinking about a downtown Miami residence within walking distance of the new Flagler, book an appointment and we'll go over the buildings closest to the blocks that are filling in first.
