For most of the second half of 2025, the island's most recognizable dining room sat dark. The Key Colony Inn had closed in July, its longtime owners had left town, and the corner at 700 W. Ocean Drive that had anchored Friday nights for decades was just a building with the lights off. If you live here, you noticed. You also probably didn't realize that the reopening was only the visible piece of something bigger.

One operator now controls three separate food projects between Ocean Drive and the top of Sadowski Causeway. They will share a single kitchen. That is the story worth understanding, because it changes what dinner in Key Colony Beach is going to look like for the next several years.

The 700 W. Ocean Drive Reset

The property at 700 W. Ocean Drive reopened on December 1, 2025 as The Inn at Key Colony. Same address, new everything else. The famed Key Colony Inn had been shuttered since July, when the previous owners abruptly left town and later sold for $3 million. The buyer was Jim Figueroa, and the couple he put in charge of running it, Michael and Amanda Lordi, were hired for a completely different project first.

Their original job was Water's Edge, a newly built restaurant coming to Sadowski Causeway. Already hired by Figueroa to open the upcoming Water's Edge along the causeway, they came home from their honeymoon to a call telling them they were about to be a lot busier because "we got Key Colony." Two restaurants for one couple, and then a third project layered on top of that.

Amanda is not new to this room. She worked under former Key Colony Inn owners Sergei and Lena Proudnik in 2013, and later managed fine dining at the Plaza Grill in Marathon. That is the local knowledge you can't hire off a résumé. She knows what the regulars at the old Inn ordered, and she is running the front of house and bar; Michael runs the kitchen.

What Actually Changed

The building itself was gutted. During reconstruction the bar was shifted back to allow for booth seating and a more open lounge feel, the old dining room furniture was removed, and the carpet came off the ceiling, replaced by fresh paint and paneling. If you remember the old room, that last detail alone should signal how complete the reset is.

The concept is not a nostalgia play. It is Italian handmade pasta stacked against a chophouse steak program, with a from-scratch kitchen and a cocktail program built to match. Current operating hours, per the restaurant's OpenTable listing:

• Lunch: 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Thursday through Sunday
• Happy hour: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Dinner: 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
• Closed Wednesday
• Dress code: resort casual

The owner lists a resort-casual dress code, so smart casual attire is appropriate — think nice shirts, sundresses, or neat casual wear rather than beachwear. That is a real shift from what the causeway typically asks of you at dinner, and it tells you where they think the room is aimed.

The Causeway Play

Water's Edge is the second building. It is new construction on Sadowski Causeway, and it is scheduled for a spring 2026 opening. The Inn deliberately isn't chasing a big lunch crowd out of the gate, because Water's Edge is the piece meant to catch the daytime traffic and the walk-in causeway business.

The third piece is the one most residents haven't clocked yet. The old Causeway Pizza space at 301 Sadowski Causeway, closed for a while now, is being turned into a convenience store and sandwich shop under the same ownership. That address matters. It is the first commercial building you see once you turn off U.S. 1 at mile marker 53.5 and cross onto the island. Whatever goes into that space essentially becomes the front door of Key Colony Beach for anyone driving down.

Here is how the three projects line up:

Why One Kitchen Matters

This is the detail that reframes the whole thing.

The Inn's kitchen, with an abundance of storage and prep space, will serve as a commissary for Water's Edge and for the upcoming convenience store and sandwich shop at the former Causeway Pizza site.

That is not three restaurants opening near each other. That is one production kitchen feeding three storefronts at three different price points along a half-mile stretch. The sandwich you grab at the causeway in a paper wrapper is going to come out of the same room that makes the pasta at 700 W. Ocean Drive. The bread program, the sauce base, the meat purveyor, the sourcing standards — one set of decisions, three sales channels.

For residents, this has a couple of practical implications. Consistency across the three venues should be higher than you would normally expect from unrelated openings. Pricing tiers will actually tier, because they are designed to, rather than three independent operators all trying to be the "nice" place in town. And a bad night at one location will show up in the other two faster than it would in a normal food scene, because the failure point is shared.

There is also a fragility here worth naming. When one kitchen underwrites three rooms, one bad hurricane season, one lease dispute, or one staffing crisis takes a bigger bite than it would if the projects were independent. That is not a prediction. It is just the shape of the bet.

Where This Leaves the Rest of the Island

The rest of Key Colony Beach's food map isn't going anywhere. Havana Jack's Oceanside Restaurant & Bar continues as the open-air waterfront room where relaxed island vibes meet coastal cuisine, with fresh local seafood, Cuban and Caribbean flavors, ocean views, and live music. The Cabana Club still handles the beach-club-with-a-pass crowd. A short drive over the causeway puts you at Sparky's Landing, Island Fish Co., Frank's Grill, and the Marathon options the Overseas Highway has always offered.

What changes is the weeknight math. Before December, a resident planning a mid-week dinner without leaving the island had a very short list. The Inn's Monday-Tuesday-Thursday lunch and dinner service, closed only on Wednesday, restores a genuine sit-down option on nights when Havana Jack's is your only other in-city choice. Once Water's Edge is open, lunch on-island becomes a real thing again rather than a drive. And if the sandwich shop at 301 lands, provisioning a boat morning stops requiring a run up to Publix.

For Owners Who Rent Their Place

If you own a home here and rent it out, the practical read is straightforward. The restaurant question is one of the first three things guests ask, right after directions and Wi-Fi. Until December, the honest answer was that the island's marquee room was closed and you were pointing guests down the causeway. That answer has changed.

An updated guest guide should now name The Inn at Key Colony as a Monday-through-Sunday option, note the Wednesday closure, mention that dinner starts at 5:00 p.m., and flag the resort-casual dress code so nobody shows up in a swimsuit and gets embarrassed. When Water's Edge opens, the same guide gets a lunch anchor for the first time in a long time. That's a small update that meaningfully affects reviews.

A note for buyers looking at half-duplexes or single-family homes on the ocean side: the block around 700 W. Ocean Drive is now within short walking distance of a real dinner room again. That is not a school-district-style amenity you can quantify on a spec sheet, but it is the sort of thing that separates a rental listing from every other rental listing in the same price band once you write the copy.

What to Watch Over the Next Two Quarters

Three things are worth tracking. First, whether Water's Edge actually hits its spring 2026 opening or slips, because the whole three-venue thesis works better when the causeway lunch piece is live. Second, whether the sandwich shop at 301 Sadowski settles into a real grab-and-go role or gets swallowed by the more ambitious sit-down projects. Third, what happens at the old Havana Jack's and Cabana Club menus in response, since they now have a serious in-city competitor for the first time in years.

Key Colony Beach is a small island with, per the city, just over 1,427 year-round residents. Food scenes on islands this size don't usually reorganize in one calendar year. This one is.

If you own a home in Key Colony Beach and want to talk through how the changes on Ocean Drive and Sadowski Causeway are affecting rental performance or resale positioning on your street, Jessica Borraccino knows this island block by block. Let's connect — schedule your free consultation.