What's New at Watersound Town Center This Summer

Two years ago, a run to Watersound Town Center meant Publix, Starbucks, and maybe a slice at Marco's before heading home. This summer, the same loop can cover a Lagree class, a birthday gift from an upscale boutique, a sub for the beach, a chiropractor appointment, and dinner at a proper sports tavern without ever crossing US 98. The center hit an inflection point sometime between the November 2025 leasing announcement and the June 2026 opening wave, and it's the kind of shift residents feel in their weekly rhythm before they see it on any map.

Here's what actually changed, what's still coming, and how the summer 2026 tenant class is reshaping daily life inside Watersound Origins, Camp Creek, and Origins Crossings.

The tipping point, in numbers

The headline stat is scale. Watersound Town Center currently features approximately 160,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, service and office space and is 98% leased. Plans call for the center to grow to approximately 400,000 square feet. A year ago the footprint sat closer to 150,000 square feet with visible gaps in the tenant roster. Today the gaps are gone, and two additional buildings are planned to break ground this year at Watersound Town Center, with retailers to be announced.

The other number that matters is the rooftops feeding it. The nearby Watersound Origins, Watersound Camp Creek and Watersound Origins Crossings residential communities continue to expand, with more than 1,700 completed homes, townhomes and apartment units and additional homesites in various stages of development. That's up from roughly 1,500 completed units cited in the November 2025 update, and it explains why national brands that historically clustered around Rosemary Beach and Seaside are now willing to plant flags this far east on 30A.

What just opened, what's on deck

National and regional brands including FP Movement, Hemline, Monkee's and Sunset Shoes & Lifestyles recently opened their doors, with Johnnie-O expected to follow later this summer. Jersey Mike's Subs and Lagree 30A have opened, expanding dining and wellness offerings, while national homebuilder Fischer Homes has opened an office and showroom.

Where the change actually shows up

The interesting part isn't the tenant list. It's how the tenant list redraws a resident's week.

The morning loop

Before the summer openings, the Watersound morning routine leaned on Starbucks and a run over to Rosemary Beach for a boutique fitness class. Now Lagree 30A, a local fitness studio offering the patented Lagree Fitness method used in more than 500 studios worldwide, is a five-minute drive from most doorsteps in Origins. Pair it with a coffee at the existing Starbucks or a smoothie stop, and the morning stays inside the community. That matters more than it sounds. The bottleneck on 30A in July isn't distance, it's the twenty-minute crawl past Alys Beach at 9 a.m.

The errand block

Fonville Press and The Citizen in Alys Beach have long been the reference points for casual daily food in this stretch. The gap Watersound Town Center just closed is the middle of the day. A resident can now handle a Publix run, grab a sub from Jersey Mike's for a beach cooler, pick up a hostess gift at Art-of-Fact(s), and swing through Hemline or Monkee's without a second stop. Art-of-Fact(s) is a curated collection of elevated home decor, entertaining essentials, antiquities, and artful gifts from the owners of The Art of Simple in Santa Rosa Beach. The Santa Rosa Beach lineage is the giveaway. It's a locally trusted operator, not a resort-tourist gift shop.

For anyone weighing a lot in Origins Crossings or a resale in Origins, the Fischer Homes office and showroom now sitting inside the town center is a quiet convenience. You can walk through finish selections in the same trip as a grocery run.

The evening shift

The dining side is where the summer added the most range. Scout Sports Tavern from Quest Hospitality Concepts, the team behind Fonville Press and The Citizen in Alys Beach, recently opened. That pedigree is the reason to pay attention. Fonville Press and The Citizen have set the tone for casual-to-elevated dining in Alys for years, and Scout brings that operator into a category 30A has genuinely lacked: a proper sports tavern with elevated pub food. Ambrosia Prime Seafood and Steaks still holds the fine-dining slot at the center, so the tenant mix now covers a Wednesday-night burger and a Saturday-night steak without leaving the property.

The tell for a maturing town center is when residents stop planning around it and start using it by default. Watersound is roughly there.

The apparel story is not just apparel

It's tempting to skim the boutique openings as retail filler. The pattern says otherwise.

FP Movement is a national activewear brand from Free People with 220 store locations across the country. Monkee's is a regional, locally owned and operated upscale women's clothing boutique with 60 locations primarily throughout the Southeast. Johnnie-O is a national premium golf-inspired apparel company with products distributed through nearly 2,000 golf shops and 15 branded retail stores. Hemline is a regional fashion-forward women's clothing boutique with more than 30 locations throughout the Southeast. Sunset Shoes & Lifestyles is a premiere local shoe and fashion boutique featuring top brands and more than 200 vendors, with six locations across Northwest Florida.

Read the list as a whole and a pattern shows up. Two national brands whose site-selection teams almost never overlap. Two Southeast regionals that ordinarily chase Charleston and Greenville addresses. One Northwest Florida operator that already knows this specific customer. Landlords call that a balanced apparel floor, and it's the kind of mix that usually shows up in a market three to five years earlier than it did in Inlet Beach.

For residents, the practical read is simpler. The reason to drive to Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach for a Saturday shopping trip just got weaker.

What's still under construction

Two threads to watch through the back half of 2026.

The first is the Johnnie-O opening. Johnnie-O is expected to follow later this summer, which likely places it in the currently-finishing multi-tenant building alongside the boutiques that opened in the spring.

The second is the pair of new buildings scheduled to break ground before year-end. Two additional buildings are planned to break ground this year at Watersound Town Center. Retailers planned for these buildings will be announced in the near future. With the current phase 98% leased and a stated end-state of 400,000 square feet, the trajectory is clear. The interesting question is what categories still feel underrepresented. Kids' apparel, a full-service pharmacy counter beyond Publix's, a bookstore, and a bakery are all conspicuous by absence today.

The context for anyone thinking longer term

If you already own here, the summer 2026 openings mostly buy you back time. Fewer trips west, fewer 30A traffic decisions, more of the week handled within a two-mile radius. That's the honest daily-life read.

If you're watching the market from outside Watersound, the shift is worth naming. The recent openings bring new energy and consumer traffic to Watersound Town Center and continue to create the vibrant shopping and dining experience we envision, said Rebecca Waters, St. Joe Director of Commercial Sales and Leasing. Corporate quotes aside, a 98%-leased lifestyle center anchoring 1,700-plus homes with a doubling of square footage on the drawing board is a different kind of neighborhood than the one that existed in 2023. It changes how the surrounding residential product is priced, how it rents, and how the resale story reads three years out.

That's the piece worth sitting with. The town center isn't a nice amenity attached to Watersound. It's increasingly the reason the surrounding communities feel less like a beach subdivision and more like a small town with a coast attached.

When you're ready to talk

Whether you're already inside Watersound and curious how the town center is shifting resale demand on your street, or you're watching from farther east on 30A and wondering whether Origins Crossings deserves a longer look, the Jonathan Hill Team is happy to walk you through what's actually trading, what's holding, and what the next twelve months of construction likely means for your address. Schedule a consultation and let's talk specifics.