In a surprise announcement, The Tides restaurant, a longtime favorite fine dining spot for island residents, has scrapped plans to relocate to a new South Beach location. Instead, the restaurant will close for a couple of months in late summer for an “aesthetic refresh” and reopen in its current location on Cardinal Drive in the fall. According to the principals involved, the decision had everything to do with “emotion” and little to do with financial considerations. “I own both properties, and the closer we came to moving time, the more I came to realize that it’s not all about making money,” said Anthony DeChellis, a longtime Vero Beach resident and the retired CEO of Credit Suisse Private Banking in New York City. “Sometimes it’s about listening to the community and what it is telling you.” DeChellis said that “more and more people stopped by the restaurant and told us please don’t do that,” referring to the planned move to DeChellis new, mixed-use center on South A1A across the road from the Johnny D’s restaurant. “This is our second home,” DeChellis quoted regulars of The Tides as having said. “This is where we celebrated our high school graduation, our engagement, birthdays and all the important dates in our lives.” Chef Leanne Kelleher, who has run The Tides at the same location for the past 26 years, echoed similar sentiments when she made the announcement on Facebook last week. “The charm, warmth and intimate atmosphere of our restaurant matter deeply to our guests – and to us,” Kelleher said in her post. “We realize our heart is here. Rather than relocating, we have chosen to reinvest in our current home and prepare for the future.” Kelleher said her highly-rated restaurant will shut down during the traditionally slow summer months of August and September when Vero Beach’s snowbird residents are up north and reopen in October – “refreshed, renewed – and still unmistakably The Tides.” Kelleher said in a follow-up interview with 32963 that she received hundreds of responses praising her decision within hours of putting up her Facebook post. For the past couple of years, Kelleher and DeChellis have both said that The Tides would move into the main ground floor space at DeChellis’ 1410 South A1A office and retail center when the restaurant space there was ready. The restaurant’s tenure there was supposed to last for two years, during which time DeChellis planned to tear down the current restaurant location on Cardinal Drive and construct a new building custom built for The Tides. According to the plan, the new South Beach location would have adjoined an upscale food market, also run by Kelleher. The two-story, mixed-use, 27,000- square-foot complex, designed in Anglo-Caribbean style, includes wide, marble-paved verandas, passageways and a courtyard like an Italian piazza as well as 15,000 square feet of leasable space. The building sits on a 1.6-acre site and has parking spaces for 69 cars. The original plan called for Kelleher to continue operating a new restaurant at the South Beach site even after she moved The Tides back to Central Beach, but she will now concentrate only on her present restaurant on Cardinal. Meanwhile, DeChellis says that he and Kelleher are still “great friends” and that he will help her with her restaurant plans, while she helps him with his plans to attract another restaurant tenant for the site originally intended for The Tides. “Leanne worked for my father way back when and there is nothing but good energy between us,” DeChellis said. DeChellis said he isn’t ready to announce who will occupy the space he built for The Tides, but he expects the market to open first, followed by a new restaurant “that can hopefully open in early October.” He said he has already hired someone to run it. “It’s all good and everybody is very happy,” DeChellis said. “I discovered there was so much emotion involved, that I decided to shut up and listen to what the neighbors, the community and the employees were telling us. I didn’t want to fight against it anymore. After 26 years, it became evident that there were a lot of emotional attachments with the present site. “The magic of a restaurant is not just about the quality of the food,” DeChellis continued. “It’s also about the feeling you get when you walk in the door, and all the memories that are stirred up all over again about the numerous great occasions when you had fine meals there.” DeChellis called the decision to scrap plans for relocation and instead remodel the Cardinal Drive location a “compromise that made everyone happy.” The current premises of The Tides have always been considered a quaint and somewhat awkward spot for a restaurant. The building is a converted single-family home with limited outdoor space and indoor dining that is spread through several separate rooms of what once was a private residence. Kelleher said the “remodel and refresh” will not substantially change the layout, but will involve an upgrade to the roof, the air conditioning, the landscaping and furnishings. “Some of the systems were getting kind of old,” she said. The Tides has long been a favorite of beachside residents, many of whom have standing reservations for a certain night of the week. Because the restaurant serves so many regulars, it’s often difficult to get a reservation in season, even weeks in advance. The Tides is open for dinner, starting at 5 p.m., six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday, and is closed on Mondays. According to its website, the restaurant offers a menu of Floridian and New American cuisine with Southern, Latin, Caribbean and French influences, with an extensive wine list and a full bar.