The Ryerson family stopped where a lot of regulars stop now, at the blue building sitting at the top of a small rise inside Carlin Park. A coming soon sign hangs on the front, fading a little more with every South Florida summer. Greg Ryerson was visiting from Wellington with his parents, who had been coming to this stretch of beach for years before the building went quiet. "This is my mom and dad's favorite restaurant for years, and they were really disappointed when it closed," he told a reporter this month.
Four years is a long time for a building to sit empty in a park this well used. But the more interesting story isn't that nobody wants the space. It's that someone almost took it, the deal came apart this spring, and the county's plan for what comes next just got more complicated than a simple restaurant lease.
The Lazy Loggerhead Cafe closed in 2022, leaving the building at the top of that rise dark ever since. It sits close enough to the sand that regulars on the beach can see the sign from their towels, which is part of why its emptiness has become something people notice out loud rather than just accept. Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation, which owns and manages Carlin Park, has said it plans to issue a new request for proposals within the next several months, and that whoever takes over would have the option to tear down the existing structure and start over rather than renovate what's there now.
For a stretch, it looked like the wait was over. Dune Dog, the food and beverage brand known around Jupiter, was set to move into the space. Then the arrangement collapsed. A manager with Dune Dog Operations said the company and the county mutually agreed to end the agreement this spring, before any buildout began.
What makes that worth pausing on is what Dune Dog is doing everywhere else. The company still has a major expansion in motion, with a location on Orlando's International Drive set to open this November. A brand that's actively signing new leases elsewhere didn't walk away from Carlin Park because it lost its appetite for growth. Something about the terms, the building, or the county's requirements at this specific site didn't work, even for an operator with the momentum to open somewhere else the same year.
While the building waits for its next chapter, the county has been running food trucks through the site on a monthly trial basis. Dune Dog's truck had a presence there this summer, parked at the location as recently as July, even after the permanent deal had already ended.
It's a workable stopgap, but not everyone treats it as a solution. Gretchen Maclachlan, who recently moved back to Jupiter, put it plainly:
"It would be great to have a breakfast and lunch facility again to be able to come over to the beach and experience a nice meal on the water."
A rotating truck schedule covers lunch on a good day. It doesn't replace a kitchen that opens at sunrise for the joggers coming off the exercise trail.
Here's the part that changes how you should read the timeline. The county isn't just shopping the empty restaurant building. The next vendor selected will have the option, though not the obligation, to also manage 10 new sand volleyball courts that are planned for the park.
Carlin Park currently has one sand volleyball court. Bundling a food concession with the operation of ten more courts turns a straightforward restaurant lease into a much larger commercial proposition, one that touches staffing, liability, and programming well beyond running a breakfast counter. That kind of bundling can widen the field of operators capable of taking it on, but it also adds negotiating layers that a simple cafe lease never had. If the Dune Dog deal fell through under a smaller, simpler ask, a bigger one is not obviously the faster path to an open building.
None of this touches the rest of what makes Carlin Park a daily habit for people who live nearby rather than a once-a-summer destination. The county's own facility listing lays it out:
That stretch of dog beach is one of the few left in Florida where a well-behaved dog can go off-leash with its owner, and it's earned a loyalty among regulars that has nothing to do with what's happening at the restaurant building up the rise.
Whatever is or isn't happening with the restaurant, the Seabreeze Amphitheater side of the park has kept its own rhythm. Carlin Park After Dark, the free tribute concert series held right at the amphitheater, has run its usual calendar this year, from a Women of Country tribute show in February to a Given to Fly performance in April. Lawn chairs and blankets are welcome, food and drinks are sold on site, and the shows have continued on schedule regardless of what's happening with the building nearby.
The honest read here isn't that the county is dragging its feet or that nobody's interested in Carlin Park's oceanfront restaurant space. A capable, expanding operator got close enough to sign, then walked away this spring for reasons that haven't been fully explained. Now the county is preparing to ask for something larger, a food concession tied to ten new volleyball courts, which is a heavier lift than the deal that already didn't hold together once.
If you're the kind of regular who already checks the Seabreeze concert calendar before a Saturday night, it's worth watching for the same update on the restaurant space once the new RFP goes out. The building at the top of the rise isn't going anywhere. What moves into it next depends on whether a bigger ask finds a better match than the last one did.
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