"I wanted to be the first one in there," Mike Linder told New Pelican.
That's Mike Linder, talking about the decision to open South Bar & Kitchen on NE 1st Avenue in Old Town Pompano Beach, a stretch of the city he grew up in and had watched sit quiet for years. Linder already owns Rio's Tequila Bar and Canyon in Fort Lauderdale. He knows what a restaurant district looks like before it's a district. The story extends beyond a single good location. Five different property owners and one persistent Community Redevelopment Agency were part of the effort to bring a handful of empty storefronts together into something that functions as one night out instead of five separate ones.
The wider cluster is easy to miss if you only hear about these places one at a time. The Vault just won a Sun Sentinel South Florida Favorites gold award for Best New Restaurant. South Bar & Kitchen has become the anchor tenant of a public space built around a century-old ficus tree. Odd Breed Wild Ales ships barrel-aged sours to subscribers across the country from a spot across the street from Bailey Contemporary Arts. None of that reads as a coincidence once you see how the CRA actually assembled the ground these businesses sit on.
A bank vault with a preserved vault
The Vault sits at 61 NE 1st Street, inside the building that was the State Bank of Pompano when it opened on September 25, 1922. The building later became First Bank of Pompano, then Farmer's Bank, and at some point drew the attention of the Ashley Gang, the outlaw family that spent the 1910s and 1920s robbing banks across South Florida. When the original bank closed during the Great Depression, the Pompano Beach Historical Society preserved the three-foot-tall vault door rather than letting it disappear with the rest of the building's contents.
Owner Jessica Spillman got that door back. It now sits inside the restaurant as the literal centerpiece of a 1920s speakeasy concept, alongside murals depicting the Ashley Gang and an open-air biergarten out back where dogs are welcome on a dedicated canine menu. The CRA backed the buildout with a Strategic Investment Program grant covering electrical, plumbing, and HVAC work, plus a separate façade grant for the windows, doors, and outdoor deck construction. The restaurant opened in 2025. The Sun Sentinel award came this year.
The backyard nobody had to notice was engineered
The ficus tree anchoring South Bar & Kitchen's patio wasn't always the centerpiece of anything. For years it stood in a lot the city itself has described as underutilized grass with blighted storefronts around it, the tree's exposed roots covered by plywood decking. What makes the space now known as Old Town's Backyard interesting isn't the tree. It's what it took to open it up.
The 15,000 square feet around that tree belonged to five separate property owners, which meant the CRA couldn't just develop it the way a single landowner might. It had to negotiate ground leases across all five parcels before a single dollar of improvement money could go in. Once that was done, South Bar & Kitchen became the first business to open into the space, a $2.5 million private investment matched by roughly $304,000 in CRA incentives and tenant improvements. The Florida Redevelopment Association recognized the project in 2023 for creative organizational development and funding, which is bureaucratic language for solving a very specific problem: how do you build one walkable block out of five different owners who never had a reason to coordinate before.
That's the mechanism most people walking through Old Town on a Friday night never see. The reason six or seven businesses within two blocks of each other feel connected instead of scattered isn't proximity. It's that the CRA's Backyard project physically required those owners to cooperate before anyone could pour a foundation.
What fills in around the anchor
Old Town's newer businesses tend to occupy buildings with a second life already built in, which gives the district a texture that a from-scratch retail strip doesn't have. Soulful Steep, the teahouse, salt cave, and retail emporium a short walk from South Bar & Kitchen, sits in the same space the Rose Tea Room occupied in the 1920s, according to the Pompano Beach Historical Society. Papamigos, the Asian and Mexican fusion gastropub at 44 NE 1st Street, comes from the same ownership group behind Papa's Raw Bar. Odd Breed Wild Ales, the small barrel-aged brewery across from Bailey Contemporary Arts, has built a following well beyond Broward County, shipping small batches of its wild ales to subscribers nationwide from a taproom that seats a fraction of the audience it serves.
Here's how the current cluster breaks down:
| Business | Location | What it is | The detail that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Vault | 61 NE 1st Street | 1920s-themed restaurant and bar in the former State Bank of Pompano | Preserved bank vault, 2026 Sun Sentinel Gold Award for Best New Restaurant |
| South Bar & Kitchen | 165 NE 1st Avenue | Cajun and Southern American kitchen and bar | First business to open into the CRA's Backyard project |
| Odd Breed Wild Ales | Across from BaCA | Barrel-aged sour brewery | Ships small-batch releases to subscribers nationally |
| Soulful Steep | Old Town | Teahouse, salt cave, and retail emporium | Occupies the historic Rose Tea Room space |
| Papamigos | 44 NE 1st Street | Asian and Mexican fusion gastropub | From the ownership group behind Papa's Raw Bar |
The night that turns six storefronts into one plan
None of this works as a night out if a visitor has to plan five separate stops with five separate parking decisions. That's the job Old Town Untapped does. The monthly block party runs the first Friday of most months from 6 to 10 p.m., centered on NE First Street and North Flagler Avenue around Bailey Contemporary Arts at 41 NE First Street, with food trucks, live music, a DJ, an artist marketplace, and on good nights a fire fountain running water, light, and flame together. Parking is free at the municipal buildings on West Atlantic Boulevard and at the Cultural Center a block away, which matters more than it sounds like it should once you've circled Old Town's side streets looking for a spot on a busy Friday.
Untapped takes the summer off. It doesn't run in July, August, or September, which means the district goes quiet on the one night a month that normally pulls a crowd through all of it at once. This Friday, October 2, is the first one back since June, and it's the same weekend the district's other calendar starts moving again too, with the Cultural Center's 2026 to 2027 season opening a few blocks away.
That timing isn't a coincidence either. Old Town's businesses stay open year round, but the night that stitches them into a single evening only exists eight or nine times a year. If you've been meaning to see what's changed on NE 1st Street since the spring, this Friday is the version of Old Town built for exactly that.
For the fuller annual rhythm around Old Town and the rest of the city's calendar, we mapped it out in August in Pompano Beach: What Locals Do When the Festival Calendar Goes Dark.
If you want more of what's actually changing on the ground in Pompano Beach before it shows up anywhere else, Lisa Stephenson walks these same two blocks. Let's Connect.
