What's Opening Around Heron Bay This Summer: A Resident's Field Guide

The plaza at Coral Ridge Drive and Holmberg has spent the last eight months in an awkward in-between phase. Angelo Elia Restaurant closed permanently on Saturday, December 13, 2025, at Sawgrass Center in Coral Springs, adjacent to the Heron Bay community in Parkland. For a stretch of winter, the anchor Italian room at the front of the plaza sat dark while residents cut their orbits east to Riverstone or south to Coral Springs proper.

That gap is closing fast, and not in the way most South Florida strip centers refill. Instead of a single replacement, Sawgrass Center is getting a coordinated wave of openings this summer that reshape what you can walk to from the front gate of Heron Bay. The bigger story sitting underneath the marquee names: one hospitality group has decided our stretch of Coral Ridge Drive is worth three concepts inside eighteen months, and downtown Coral Springs is finally getting the sit-down anchor it has been missing.

Here is what is actually landing, where, and when.

Ember & Vine takes the Angelo Elia room

The most consequential opening is a chef-driven all-day restaurant in the exact footprint Angelo Elia vacated. Ember & Vine, P Hospitality Management's newest restaurant concept, opens Monday, July 27 with a menu of shareables and small plates at 5920 Coral Ridge Drive in Coral Springs.

The name behind it matters more than the concept sheet. Ember & Vine is P Hospitality Management's third opening in Broward County: Eddie & Vinny's Coastal Italian in March 2025, followed by Dear Olivia in August 2025, with the group also operating Prezzo Boca Raton, Amante's in Deerfield Beach, and an Eddie & Vinny's Palm Beach Gardens opening Fall 2026. Eddie and Christina Pozzuoli have essentially bet their expansion plan on this corridor. When one restaurant group opens three rooms inside a five-mile radius in under two years, they are not testing the market. They are claiming it.

The room itself will be different from what Angelo Elia offered. The restaurant will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner daily in a bright, contemporary space designed for gatherings, with featured dishes including Christina's crudité, tuna bombs, hearth bread topped with whipped herb ricotta and local honey, miso black cod, and beef short ribs served with scallion pancakes. Ember and Vine will also be partnering with Coral Springs-based 360F Coffee Roasters for its coffee, citing the importance of working with other local businesses when possible.

That local-sourcing detail is the tell. The Pozzuolis could have used any regional roaster. Choosing a Coral Springs company signals the room is being positioned as a neighborhood fixture rather than a boca-adjacent trophy.

The rest of the Sawgrass Center slate

Ember & Vine is not arriving alone. The restaurant joins a slate of several new eateries opening in the shopping plaza on Coral Ridge Drive, including a Wingstop, Pummarola Pizzeria and Long Island Bagel Cafe.

Here is the summer-into-fall opening picture on one page:

On Wingstop specifically, the new restaurant will open at 5972 Coral Ridge Drive, several doors down from the Publix Super Market at Sawgrass Center near Heron Bay, located next to NY Pizza Place and replacing Max Johnson Salon. The tentative opening date is late September or early October, but construction timelines can change, a spokesperson for the company told the Coral Springs News.

Read that lineup together and the plaza's identity is shifting. A year ago Sawgrass Center was a Publix run with an anchor Italian restaurant and a scattering of service tenants. By fall it will offer an all-day chef-driven room, a quick-service wing operator, a New York-style bagel counter, and a pizzeria. That is a full daypart stack inside one walk.

Downtown Coral Springs gets its anchor

The other opening worth marking on a Heron Bay resident's map is roughly ten minutes south. Gary Rack's Farmhouse opened at 3314 N. University Drive in Coral Springs at the Modera Coral Springs development, combining a menu of steak frites, ribs, salads, and brunch favorites with an open kitchen, wraparound patio, and colorful mural, from South Florida restaurateur Gary Rack, whose portfolio includes Farmhouse locations in Boca Raton and Delray Beach.

The scale matters. At 3,600 square feet, the Coral Springs location is the largest Farmhouse restaurant to date. Rack's Boca and Delray rooms have been ranked among the busiest brunch destinations in southern Palm Beach County for a decade. Choosing this market for his biggest build is a statement.

The design detail also tells you something about the ambition:

A standout feature is a panoramic mural by Miami artist Ruben Ubiera, whose artwork serves as a focal point inside the restaurant. The space also features 16-foot ceilings and vintage birdcage-inspired light fixtures.

Gary Rack's Farmhouse is open Monday through Friday beginning at 11 a.m. and Saturdays and Sundays beginning at 10 a.m., with happy hour offered daily from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Weekend brunch here is close enough to fit before a mid-morning tennis session at Plaza del Lago without a two-hour round trip to Atlantic Avenue.

Weekend anchors that aren't restaurants

Food is the loudest part of the summer story, but not the only one. Three standing programs are worth marking on the family calendar.

The Parkland Farmers' Market runs Sundays at the Parkland Equestrian Center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It sits about eight minutes east of Heron Bay's front entrance and rotates local produce, prepared food, and craft vendors. For a lot of residents this is the shortest possible outdoor weekend routine that still feels like a proper Sunday.

Live music at The Walk continues through the summer. Live music returns to Coral Springs as The Walk holds its 2026 "The Walk on Wednesday" concert series, offering free, weekly performances. Mid-week free music twenty minutes from home is the kind of thing residents forget exists until August, at which point the summer is half over.

Fourth of July programming this year is larger than usual because of the country's semiquincentennial. ABSOLUTE BON JOVI at City of Coral Springs 250 Year 4th of July Celebration is happening Saturday, July 4, 2026 from 4:00 PM onwards at Mullins Park, Coral Springs. If you have out-of-town family visiting for the holiday weekend, Mullins Park is the local play.

The bigger question sitting behind all of this

There is a reason operators like the Pozzuolis and Gary Rack are placing large bets on this corridor at the same time. Look at what is on offer at the north edge of the community.

The property is situated off Heron Bay Boulevard, directly north of the Sawgrass Expressway. It benefits from privacy due to the water surrounding the land that is shared only with the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel. The site, formerly the clubhouse for the now-closed Heron Bay Golf Course, is a prime retail, entertainment, health and wellness development opportunity. The City of Parkland, the current owner, envisions a development that will harmonize with the single-family homes and the future Village in the Park proposed development.

A 9.3-acre commercial parcel with a Parkland vision statement attached, sitting on the north side of Heron Bay Boulevard, tells you where the retail center of gravity is heading. The Sawgrass Center wave is the first act. Whatever eventually rises on the old golf course clubhouse site will be the second.

For someone who has lived in Heron Bay through the golf course closure and the long quiet at the front of Sawgrass Center, this summer is the first time in a while when the answer to "where should we go tonight" is going to be a genuine question with several new answers.

A note on the pace of change

Restaurant timelines move. Ember & Vine's July 27 opening is on the record. Wingstop's late September or early October window is officially soft. Pummarola and Long Island Bagel Cafe have signed but not announced firm dates. Track the plaza's storefronts on your Publix runs through August and September and you will see the sequence play out in real time.

For residents thinking about the value of their home over the next few years, the pattern to watch is not any single opening. It is whether the corridor sustains this density of new operators through 2027. Neighborhoods with walkable dining anchors on their front door hold value differently than neighborhoods without them. Sawgrass Center is, for the first time in a decade, becoming that kind of anchor.

If you are curious what all of this means for pricing on your specific street inside Heron Bay, that is the kind of question we look at every week. Reach out to Roman Pavlik for a conversation about how the corridor around your home is shaping values heading into next year.