It's a Sunday morning on Harbor Island and someone is out of coffee. There's no dashing down the block for it. The nearest full grocery store means crossing the 79th Street Causeway to Treasure Island's Presidente Supermarket, or continuing off the islands entirely toward the mainland or Miami Beach. That's not a complaint residents make out loud much anymore. It's just how a week gets planned here, the way you'd plan around a bridge that opens for boat traffic. North Bay Village has never had its own grocery store since the three islands were dredged out of Biscayne Bay in the 1940s.
That's ending, and it's ending at the same time as two other changes to how people move through these islands without a car. Individually, a grocery store, a waterfront walking path, and a trolley stop sound like routine growth anywhere in Miami-Dade. Landing inside the same 12 to 18 months, on three islands that have spent eighty years defined by having to leave for almost everything, they add up to something more specific: the errand pattern that has shaped daily life here since incorporation is breaking on more than one front at once.
The Errand Nobody Talks About Anymore
North Bay Village's layout explains why the gap existed so long. Harbor Island, Treasure Island, and North Bay Island cover well under a square mile of land, threaded by two causeway bridges, and the Village's commercial footprint has stayed small and residential by design for most of its history. A resident of Harbor Island typically drives across to Treasure Island for a real grocery run, or keeps going toward North Beach or the mainland. That workaround has functioned well enough that it rarely gets discussed as a gap, it's simply absorbed into how a Tuesday gets scheduled.
The scale of what's coming is what makes it worth noticing. This isn't a bodega or a specialty market filling a storefront. It's a full-size anchor grocery store, built into a new residential tower, sized for an actual weekly shop rather than a milk-and-eggs run.
What's Actually Landing at 1850 JFK Causeway
Shoma Group's Shoma Bay tower, at 1850 John F. Kennedy Causeway, is bringing 333 residences and a roughly 35,000-square-foot Publix Super Market to the ground floor, along with additional retail and restaurant space. Reporting from June 2026 puts the store's opening at either late 2026 or early 2027, which would make it the first Publix location North Bay Village has ever had inside its own borders. The developer has described the site as sitting on land that had gone roughly a decade without new residential construction before this project broke ground.
That single fact changes the calculus for anyone who has built a weekly routine around crossing a bridge for groceries. Here's how it stacks up against the other two shifts landing around the same window:
| What's changing | The old pattern | What's replacing it | Rough timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly groceries | Drive across a causeway to Treasure Island or off-island | A roughly 35,000-square-foot Publix inside Shoma Bay at 1850 JFK Causeway | Late 2026 or early 2027 |
| Getting around without a car | No transit connection off the islands | Free NBV Connector trolley linking causeway stops to Miami Beach's trolley system at Normandy Fountain | Currently tied to Village events |
| Walking the shoreline | No continuous public waterfront path | Island Walk promenade, with the South Plaza complete since 2019 and the North Plaza under construction | Ongoing, with new segments tied to individual tower approvals |
The Island Walk Is Finally Connecting Its Own Dots
The Village finished the first piece of its waterfront walkway, the Island Walk South Plaza, back in 2019, tucked between the East 79th Street Bridge and the Grandview Palace condominium. The North Plaza segment, running along the same bridge toward the Bridgewater condominium, has been under construction since. The plan has always called for an over-water connector linking the two plazas into one continuous path, with the Village's own description of the finished project running more than two miles along the waterfront.
That project is still filling in piece by piece, and some of the newest segments are arriving as a condition of approval for the towers now working through permitting. A shoreline review filed in February 2026 for twin 43-story towers at 8000 and 7946 East Drive, a project tied to Related Group and Macklowe Properties, includes roughly 1,289 linear feet of new public waterfront walkway as part of what the developer is offering in exchange for a reduced shoreline setback. It's an odd way for a walking path to get built, one tower's zoning trade at a time, but the practical effect for residents is the same: more of the shoreline becomes something you can walk rather than something you can only see from a balcony. Separately, the Village's Civic Park project on East Drive, which adds a boat dock, a kayak launch, and a nature trail, was scheduled for completion by March 2026 under the Village's own capital improvements plan, which would give residents without their own boat a direct way onto the bay for the first time.
A Free Ride Across the Causeway
The Village has also started running its own free trolley, the NBV Connector, tied to specific Village events rather than a fixed daily schedule so far. When it runs, it departs every 15 minutes between 6 and 10 p.m. from stops along the causeway, including one at the Shell gas station at Harbor Island Drive and 79th Street, and connects at Normandy Fountain to Miami Beach's own trolley system, which reaches from South Beach to North Beach. For an island chain with exactly two roads in and out, a free link into the mainland's trolley grid, even an event-based one, is a genuine change in how a night out gets planned without moving a car off the island first.
The Dining Map Is Also Turning Over
The causeway's existing restaurant roster has been quietly solid for years. Petralunga, Yaya Coastal Cuisine, Sumak, Silverlake Bistro, and CAO Bakery & Cafe all show up consistently in local rankings, and that base isn't going anywhere. What's shifting is what's landing on top of it. Palm Tree Club, founded by DJ Kygo and his manager Miles Shear, has taken over the waterfront site that used to be Shuckers Waterfront Bar & Grill, now part of the larger Continuum Waterfront District under construction along the causeway. The venue has already hosted events with Calvin Harris and the Chainsmokers, acts that historically stuck to the mainland or South Beach rather than playing a bar on North Bay Village's own shoreline. At the smaller end of the same strip, the storefront that used to house East Side Pizza has since been leased to Yes! Cafe, a reminder that turnover here isn't limited to headline waterfront projects.
Three Changes, One Window
None of these on their own would be much of a story. Grocery stores open, trolleys get funded, waterfront paths get built one permit at a time, all over Miami-Dade, every year. What makes this worth tracking if you already live on these islands is that all three are converging on the same stretch of time, on three islands whose entire identity for eighty years has rested on the fact that you had to leave for almost everything. The thing to watch this year isn't any single ribbon-cutting. It's whether groceries, a walk, and a ride off the island start happening without a car ever leaving the garage, and whether that actually changes how a week here gets planned.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property here, from a canal-front house on North Bay Island to a tower unit on Harbor Island, Vella Real Estate knows this stretch of causeway block by block. Book an appointment with Andrea Tavella to talk through what's actually changing here and what it's worth to you.
