The Order Things Open at East Beach Square Isn't the Order You'd Guess

Kenny Gerry came home from the hospital about 500 yards from where he's opening his newest bakery. According to News 3's coverage of East Beach Square, he's watched the corner of Shore Drive and Pleasant Avenue change for most of his life, and when he talks about what's happening at East Beach Square right now, he doesn't talk about it like a business deal. He talks about it like someone watching his own street finally catch up to itself.

If you live anywhere near that corner, you've been watching too. For more than a year, the shopping center that used to be East Beach Shoppes has been repainted, resigned, and rebuilt one storefront at a time, and if you've been guessing which door opens next based on which sign went up first, you've probably guessed wrong.

What's Actually Open Right Now

Two tenants are already running. Fit Body Boot Camp and a boutique called Splash both opened months ago, quietly, without much fanfare, while flashier names sat behind construction paper. Neither needed much more than paint, flooring, and a fitness rack or a clothing rail. That helps explain why they got there first. So far, the opening order seems to track buildout complexity more than buzz.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it helps explain the next set of openings on that block.

The Signs Went Up Together. The Doors Won't Open Together

Back Nine, the golf simulator, and The Bakehouse at Chelsea both have their signs mounted on the shopping center's road-facing sign, side by side, looking equally close to done. They are not equally close to done.

Bakehouse co-owner John McCormick has a Polin oven imported from Italy sitting in his new East Ocean View space, and as of mid-August he was waiting on final inspections before his team could even start practicing on it. His target was sometime in September, which means by the time you're reading this, that door may already be open, or it may be a matter of days away. Either way, a wood-fired pizza oven and a full bakery buildout involve different work from a simulator bay, which may help explain the different projected opening timelines. Back Nine told the property's managing partner, Brian Ehardt, that its own final inspections were coming up the following week, with an opening estimated at around a month and a half out from that mid-August conversation, which puts it squarely in the window we're in right now.

Two signs, same size, same prominent spot on the same pole. Not the same math behind the counter.

The Ice Cream Shop Is Expected to Open Before the Burger Joint

Here's where the pattern gets sharper. Lolly's Creamery, the Hampton Roads ice cream chain, and Frank & Patty's, the smash burger spot expanding out of Virginia Beach's ViBe District, are both still under construction. Ehardt's estimate for Lolly's is October. His estimate for Frank & Patty's is December 2026 into January 2027.

That gap is worth sitting with. When Frank & Patty's owner Kevin Ordonez first talked about the East Beach Square location, back in February, the plan was a summer 2026 opening. By August, the property's own managing partner had pushed that estimate back nearly half a year. Nobody involved has suggested the concept lost momentum or the neighborhood lost interest. One possible factor is the difference in buildout: a full-service kitchen built for smash burgers and fry stations involves different construction and inspection needs from a cold case full of ice cream. Lolly's is scooping. Frank & Patty's is frying. Those equipment differences may help explain the different opening estimates.

The estimates don't show which business people wanted more.

The One Thing That's Stalled for a Completely Different Reason

Not everything at East Beach Square is a story about commercial kitchens. The planned playground and community space, sited where the two buildings of the shopping center come together, has been delayed by something more mundane: negotiations over tenant renovation allowances and the city approvals that come with any shared public space. That's not a construction bottleneck. That's a paperwork one, and it moves on its own schedule regardless of how fast Frank & Patty's kitchen gets built out.

It's worth naming because it's easy to lose track of in a story about restaurants and signage. The community space was part of the original vision for this corner, not an afterthought bolted on once the retail leases were signed. It's just the piece with no obvious end date attached to it, because it isn't waiting on a health inspector. It's waiting on approvals that move at the pace city processes move at, which is its own kind of patience test for anyone who's been picturing a playground on that spot since the renderings first circulated.

Why the Corner Looks Different Than It Did in 2024

EF Capital bought the property in late 2024 under its old name and put more than $1.3 million into repainting and rebuilding the exterior, right down to pulling every sign off the building to redo the edifice underneath. Ehardt has said the goal was to make the structure match the East Beach neighborhood across the street rather than sit apart from it, which is a small detail but not a meaningless one if you've lived on either side of Shore Drive and watched the two sides of that road drift toward looking like they belong together.

News 3 reported Gerry's view that the area had become cleaner, gained more family atmosphere, and retained its Ocean View identity. That's the balance the whole project seems to be aiming for, whether or not the timeline photographs it, and it explains why this feels less like a demolition-and-rebuild story and more like a slow correction of something that had been overdue for a while.

What to Actually Watch For

If you want a read on this corner that holds up better than counting signs, watch for inspection stickers in the windows, not new paint on the storefronts. That's the difference between a business that's close and a business that's just visible. Fit Body and Splash proved that out first. Bakehouse and Back Nine are proving it now. Lolly's and Frank & Patty's will prove it on different timelines.

The playground is the one piece that won't follow any of this logic, since it was never really about construction speed to begin with.

You can read the full rundown of who's moving in and on what estimated timeline from News 3's coverage of East Beach Square, which includes the original February announcement of the full tenant lineup as well.

We'll be keeping an eye on this corner as the rest of it opens, mostly because we live near it too. If you want a heads up the next time a door actually opens instead of just a sign going up, Carrie On Homes is already keeping notes on this one.