On a Friday evening in downtown Lake Wales, the sidewalk outside Smokin' DJ's on North First Street fills with people waiting on brisket plates while, a few blocks over on Park Avenue, a band sets up for another round of Lake Wales Live. Tables outside Vibin' Vinnie's, the 1950s-style diner tucked into the historic Rhodesbilt Arcade, stay full past dark. None of this existed eighteen months ago. And none of it happened because the Walesbilt Hotel, the ten-story building that has anchored this block since 1926, finally reopened. It hasn't. Crews have only just finished hauling out decades of debris, and the real construction work is still months away.
That order of events matters if you've watched downtown change block by block over the past year and a half. The dining scene didn't show up because the city's marquee redevelopment project finally landed. It showed up while that project was still paperwork. The small businesses got there first, and they got there because the city built a specific mechanism to make sure they would.
A grant program did what a finished hotel couldn't
The Community Redevelopment Agency ran a restaurant incentive program offering dollar-for-dollar matching grants to help food businesses open in the northwest redevelopment area and the downtown Main Street district. It wasn't aimed at outside chains. It was aimed at people already selling food out of trailers.
Demetrius and Jennifer Leeks had run the food truck "D on Wheelz" around Lake Wales for years before a $50,000 CRA grant let them open Smokin' DJ's at 122 North First Street in March 2025. A few doors down at 126 North First, The Thirsty Dragon opened as an old-world-style tavern in the same wave of remodeled storefronts. Across town, Stephanie and David Mosley were awarded a $100,000 grant to move their six-year-old food truck operation, Whadda-Wings, into a new 1,800-square-foot building on Lincoln Avenue. Around the same stretch of months, Lady B's Tea Parlour opened at 205 East Stuart Avenue and Vibin' Vinnie's took over space in the Rhodesbilt Arcade on East Park Avenue, both filling storefronts that had sat empty or underused for years.
Main Street Executive Director Karen Thompson summed up the program's intent plainly:
"The incentives were created to stimulate private investment and reward risk takers."
The bet wasn't on an outside developer. It was on people who had already proven, one food-truck window at a time, that Lake Wales would show up for their food. That's a lower-risk way to fill a downtown than waiting for a hotel to reopen, and it's a different growth story than the one playing out a couple of miles away on US-27, where Slim Chickens and Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers have already opened near Eagle Ridge Mall, with a Panera Bread now approved to join them. The highway corridor gave residents chain options they used to drive out of town for. The historic core got its first real wave of sit-down business in decades. Both are new. They're not the same story, and if you're deciding where to spend a Friday night, it helps to know which one you're walking into.
What's actually happening at the Walesbilt, and why the timeline matters
The Walesbilt operated as a hotel until around 1995, then sat vacant for two decades while the city fought a legal battle with a prior owner. The city regained title to the building in May 2025. By March 2026, crews began clearing out the wreckage, tagging artifacts in yellow so historians could sort out what belongs to the building's original 1926 construction versus decades of later ownership. The lobby still has its Corinthian capitals, Palladian windows, marble floors, and a deeply coffered ceiling underneath the clutter.
In June 2026, the CRA signed an interim agreement with Restoration St. Louis, a firm that has restored more than 500 properties nationwide, committing up to $2 million toward design work on what has become a $43 million restoration. The CRA's total contribution across design and construction is capped at $17.5 million. The plan is to reopen the building as a Marriott Autograph Collection boutique hotel with a restaurant and event space, and the architects are currently using 3D laser scanning to map the building's sagging floors and damaged facades before a single permit gets pulled.
Here's the part that actually affects anyone living nearby: construction is expected to begin within about eight months of that June 2026 agreement, putting a realistic groundbreaking somewhere around early 2027. Once it starts, city officials have said to expect 18 to 24 months of construction. Add that up and the earliest the Walesbilt reasonably reopens is somewhere in 2028 or 2029, which lines up with City Manager James Slaton's own estimate back in March 2026 that the hotel could open "within the next three years."
That's the window worth understanding if you live downtown or visit it regularly. The quiet, half-finished stretch of North First Street you're walking past right now is a construction site in waiting, not yet an active one. Once it becomes active, downtown will spend close to two years next to it. A PlaceEconomics study commissioned for the project projects the construction phase alone will support more than 273 jobs, about $19 million in labor income, and nearly $900,000 in local tax revenue. Once it's operating, the same study projects roughly 190 permanent jobs, $12.1 million in first-year visitor spending, and more than 19,500 annual visitors to a building that currently has zero. Deputy Mayor Keith Thompson called the redevelopment deal "a big swing of the bat." City Manager Slaton put it more simply: the Walesbilt was "the missing piece."
The rhythm right now
None of that has happened yet, which is exactly why the current version of downtown is worth paying attention to on its own terms.
Lake Wales Live, a partnership between the city, Lake Wales Main Street, and the Lake Wales Arts Council, runs on select Friday evenings from 5:00 to 8:30 p.m., with live music, food trucks, and a vendor marketplace set up along Park Avenue. This spring's lineup included a Bluegrass Fest on March 28 and a set from Black Eyed Soozie on April 17. Organizers have been explicit that the point of the series is to keep foot traffic and energy downtown while the bigger construction project ramps up a few blocks away.
On Saturday mornings, the Lake Wales Main Street Farmers Market sets up at the Downtown Market Place at 20 North Market Place, running 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on select weekends throughout the month, according to the city's event calendar. Between the two, downtown now has a rhythm it didn't have a few years ago: barbecue and live music on the Fridays the series runs, produce and vendors on the Saturdays the market sets up, and a scattering of new storefronts open in between.
Longtime downtown retailers have noticed. Gordon Broadheads, who owns G's Vintage Market near the Walesbilt, told a local news crew he's glad to see the building saved and said it will do nothing but help downtown once it's finished. That's the kind of read you only get from someone who's had a storefront there through the years the building sat empty.
Why the order matters
The easy version of this story is "downtown Lake Wales got a bunch of new restaurants." The more accurate version is that a specific city program converted proven local food-truck operators into permanent storefronts years before its biggest redevelopment project could realistically open its doors, and that the small businesses now defining a Friday night on Park Avenue are filling a gap, not celebrating a finish line. The finish line is still two or three years out, and when it arrives, it will change how much traffic, noise, and foot activity this block carries for good.
If you're watching downtown Lake Wales change and find yourself wondering what any of this means for your own street, your property, or your next move in Polk County, that's a conversation worth having sooner rather than later. Craig Burke Real Estate Group works this market block by block, not just by the numbers. Talk with Craig: get a free home valuation.
