Walk down Main Street this week to grab a sandwich at Fresco Pizzeria and you'll pass an orange cone or two before you get there. The pizzeria has been open since December. The sidewalk in front of the building next door might still be dirt behind the curb, waiting on sod. That gap between what's open and what's finished is the actual story of downtown Windermere right now, and it explains something residents have probably noticed without being able to name: the new Main Street didn't arrive all at once. It arrived in two separate pieces, on two separate clocks, and they still haven't quite synced up.
What actually opened on Main Street
The redevelopment at Main Street and East 6th Avenue has been years in the making. The pre-application process for the project dates back to 2019, and the Windermere Town Council gave final approval to the development plan in August 2023. What's opened since then is a real, working commercial strip, not a rendering.
Fresco Pizzeria opened on the corner of Main and 6th Avenue on December 1, 2025. It's the second location for the Scialoia family, who have run Fresco Cucina Italiana in Dr. Phillips for nearly two decades. Achille Scialoia runs the front of house while his mother Teresa and brother Luigi handle the kitchen, and the Windermere spot leans grab-and-go: wood-fired pizza made with 48-hour fermented dough, Italian sandwiches, cornetti and bomboloni for the morning coffee crowd. Windermere Brewing, which has been downtown since July 2022, brewed an Italian-style beer specifically for the new location.
A few doors down, Solvino opened around the same window in 2025 at 527 Main Street. Ace Hardware, Allstate Insurance, Elysium Interiors, Victoria Jewelers, and Revel Realty (the rebrand of the longtime Suzi Karr Realty under broker-owner Chris Sapp) round out the lineup. On paper, the leasing is done. What's still catching up is everything the town itself controls: the pavement, the parks, the drainage underneath both.
The wine bar that had to become a club
Solvino is the most interesting story on the block, because it isn't quite the business it set out to be. Arjun and Sara Kumar, who live in Keene's Pointe, planned Solvino as a wine bar, a pre-dinner stop before residents headed out to Restaurant Row or downtown Orlando. Then the Windermere Town Council denied the conditional-use permit Solvino needed to serve alcohol to the general public, according to Orange Observer reporting.
Rather than shelve the concept, the Kumars restructured it as a private membership club, which sidesteps the public alcohol-service restriction. Memberships sold out faster than the Kumars expected, and the business added a retail storefront open to the public, selling gourmet goods and hosting tastings. Solvino also gave a Windermere-based chocolatier, Maison Des Rêves, its first brick-and-mortar shelf space.
"Windermere doesn't need a big corporate brand. It needs something special, something local."
That's Jim Karr, one of the two property owners behind the redevelopment, describing what he wanted the tenant mix to feel like. The Solvino pivot is the clearest evidence that the town got exactly that, even when it meant a business had to reinvent its own permit structure to open at all. If you've wondered why Solvino operates like a club instead of a bar you can just walk into, that's the answer: a council vote, not a business choice.
Two different projects, two different finish lines
Here's the part that isn't obvious from the sidewalk. The storefronts opened on a private development timeline, run by V-3 Capital Group under CEO Trey Vick, with Hembree Construction as general contractor. Jay and John Hembree, who grew up in Windermere, built the project. That side of downtown was substantially done by early 2026.
The town's side of the ledger is a separate, ongoing capital-improvement effort, and it has been running in public view all year. Orange Observer coverage has tracked road and park work downtown continuously since early February:
- February 2, 2026: Road closures on Seventh and Eighth avenues and Butler and Bessie streets for storm drainage work; the Lake Butler Boat Ramp reopened the same day after its own closure.
- April 6-10, 2026: Crews repaired concrete and paver driveways on Second Avenue, installed storm drainage alongside Third Street, and poured a concrete weir in the retention area while Orange County Water relocated a service line.
- May 4-22, 2026: Continued driveway and swale work on Second and Third avenues, plus cleanup and rain-garden planting at Fernwood Park and limited work at Palmer Park.
- July 6-10, 2026: Concrete curb forming at Eighth Avenue and Magnolia Street and at Eighth Avenue and East Boulevard, with continued shoulder and swale grading.
That's five months of documented work, and as of the most recent report it's still going. The retail buildout took roughly six years from first application to open doors. The infrastructure around it is on its own multi-year rhythm, tied to town budgets and construction schedules that don't move at the same pace as a restaurant lease. Residents who assumed downtown was "done" once Fresco's lights came on are looking at half the picture. The other half is still being graded, sodded, and poured a few blocks over.
| What's finished | What's still in progress (as of July 2026) |
|---|---|
| Fresco Pizzeria, Solvino, Revel Realty, Ace Hardware, Elysium Interiors, Victoria Jewelers, Allstate | Second and Third Avenue driveway repairs and swale grading |
| Main-6th Avenue building shells and leasing (V-3 Capital Group) | Fernwood Park rain garden and pond planting |
| Lake Butler Boat Ramp reopening | Eighth Avenue and East Boulevard storm drainage and curb work |
Where Main Street sits in your rotation
Once the cones clear, Main Street settles back into being one piece of a bigger picture rather than the whole picture. Windermere's food and shopping options split into a few distinct clusters, and downtown's is only the smallest and most walkable of them. The Grove at Isleworth on Conroy-Windermere Road has been the upscale anchor for years, anchored by Hawkers Asian Street Food. Cornerstone at Summerport, on the other side of town, leans family-friendly with spots like Bella Tuscany Ristorante Italiano. For the deepest variety, the ten-minute drive east to Restaurant Row in Dr. Phillips still does the heavy lifting for special-occasion dinners.
Main Street was never trying to replace any of that. What it adds is something Windermere hasn't had in a while: a strip you can walk to from home for a sandwich, a glass of wine, or a hardware run, built by people who grew up here for neighbors who already live here. That's worth something even while a few blocks of it are still under a tarp.
If you're weighing what a home near downtown Windermere is actually worth once projects like this settle in, or you're curious how a changing Main Street affects value in Keene's Pointe, Isleworth, or Summerport, The Baldor Group knows this market block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk specifics.
