As The Tides prepares to spend one final year in the Cardinal Drive space where Chef Leanne Kelleher has fed island fans for nearly a quarter century, a temporary new home – where the wildly popular restaurant will spend the 2026 season – is taking shape.
A substantial, three-building mixed-use project – which will include restaurant, retail and office space – is rising in concrete and steel at 1410 Highway A1A, across from Johnny D’s Market & Bistro, five blocks south of the 17th Street causeway.
Kelleher will be the prime tenant, occupying the entire first floor of the project. The Tides will be housed in the building at the back of the project, furthest from A1A, and Kelleher will also operate a full-service gourmet market in the building across the courtyard.
“We poured the second-floor last week and the concrete block walls are going up,” developer Anthony DeChellis told Vero Beach 32963. “We are ahead of schedule on the construction and will be open for business in early 2026.”
Kelleher is making the move because her Cardinal location, also owned by DeChellis, is slated for redevelopment. “It was built as a residence in the 1950s and it is worn out,” said DeChellis, whose father Carlo DeChellis also was a well-known restaurateur in Vero. “Once we move The Tides, it will come down.”
In the spot on Cardinal now occupied by the The Tides, a new Anglo-Caribbean style building will arise designed by Moulton Layne, which also drew up plans for the South Beach project.
Upon completion, The Tides will move back to Cardinal, while Kelleher continues to operate the market and a second restaurant at 1410 A1A.
“The plan has always been to move back to Cardinal Drive, and it always will be,” Kelleher said. “I have been there for 25 years. The second restaurant will be slightly different from The Tides, so they don’t compete, but I don’t have all the details worked out yet.”
Of the market, she says, “We want to provide the South Beach area with a market sort of like Ryders. We will have lots of soups, salads and sauces along with entrees from The Tides kitchen that you can pick up to take home. We will sell meats, fish and cheeses, and I plan to have a liquor store, too.
“It will be a full-service market where you can grab a breakfast sandwich or something for lunch, and I will keep it open in the evening so people have time to stop by after work and pick up dinner.”
Kelleher said that while she has not run a market before, she “knows a lot of people in the market business. We are recruiting experts. Staffing is still a problem for everyone, but we have our feelers out all over the country and we will find the right people.
“We will run our catering business out of the market and Chef Sue Torres will be able to expand that business with the extra space we’ll have.”
Kelleher, who said she will have to double the size of her staff, to approximately 50, to operate the two businesses, expressed confidence the initial move will be quick and smooth, with just a week of downtime between the last meal served at the Cardinal location and the first at 1410 A1A.
“We have lots of time for pre-planning, and we will work night and day to get it done,” she said. “I have shiny new kitchen equipment that will be going to the new place. I bought it knowing that we will be moving there so it will work perfectly. We will have a nice big kitchen down there, bigger than our current kitchen, which will allow us to do more.”
Kelleher expects the move back to Cardinal to go smoothly, too, in part because she has collaborated with DeChellis and Moulton Layne throughout the design process.
“I have been involved since day one with the original drawings and I just had a meeting with the architects the other day,” she said. “Anthony is great that way. He is very approachable and really interested in The Tides succeeding. He has been coming to the restaurant forever.
“We are both Vero locals and have known each other for 40 years. My first job in the business was working for his father, Carlo, at a pizza place on Miracle Mile.
“The new place will echo the existing Tides,” Kelleher continued. “It won’t be a big flashy city restaurant. It will be local and islandy, appropriate for Vero. There are comforts in the existing restaurant we want to recreate, including the outdoor bar. People really like it but in the current location it is standing room only. We want to keep the feeling we have but make more room.”
DeChellis is president of Windward Partners, a real estate development company, and DeChellis Capital. He grew up in Vero Beach after his parents moved the family from New Jersey to a home on Windward Way in the Moorings in 1974.
After graduating from St. Edward’s School, he went on to Rollins College, the University of Chicago and a successful career in banking and wealth management, holding top positions with several major financial institutions, including Credit Suisse, UBS and Merrill Lynch.
DeChellis bought the 1410 A1A site for $675,000 in 2008 when he was CEO of Credit Suisse Private Banking. Charley Brown’s restaurant, which had occupied the site, was torn down after being damaged by the 2004 hurricanes.
In 2014, at the end of his stint at Credit Suisse, DeChellis and his team drew up plans for a mixed-use development on the site similar to the one now taking shape. The site plan was approved by the city, but DeChellis hit the pause button at some point, deciding the market was not ripe for the project.
“This will be a Class-A-plus building. With all that has happened in Vero in recent years, I am confident the market will now sustain the building,” he said.
With the restaurant and retail space spoken for, and three of four office spaces taken more than a year before the project’s projected completion, his confidence seems justified.
All that remains for lease is one 2,500-foot office space and some square footage on the top floor of the central three-story building.
“I plan to move my office to that space unless a large tenant comes along who needs it,” DeChellis said. “If that happens I will give it up.”
DeChellis moved back to Windward Way, the namesake of his company, in 2018, purchasing the oceanfront estate of the Gonzalez family, the original developers of The Moorings.
“It is good to be home,” he said. “There are a lot of great things happening in Vero Beach and I want to be in that mix, helping shape what will be here for the next generation.”
