FOODIES FLOCK TO SANFORD
City is suddenly a top destination for dining
SANFORD — Brad Plummer and Anne McNamara considered many other Central Florida restaurant hot spots before opening in downtown Sanford.
But affordability in the charming small town kept pulling them back, so they opened their restaurant The District a year ago — helping to make Sanford one of the region’s fastest-growing dining destinations.
Now with four breweries, a cider maker and critically acclaimed restaurants such as The Smiling Bison and Tennessee Truffle, Sanford is becoming a foodie haven. Three large mixed-use apartment projects in the development process would add ground-floor space for restaurants and retail, and Longwood trial lawyer Mark Nation has purchased a block in downtown Sanford with more restaurant plans.
Last week, Loggerhead Distillery announced it would open in downtown Sanford, with plans for tours and a tasting room.
It’s a big change for a city that
had seen little downtown development in years, said Bob Turks, the city’s economic development director. Downtown Sanford has charm that is somewhat rare in Central Florida — with a large district of historic brick buildings, bungalow homes to the south and a lakefront walk that by 2019 will wrap 26 miles around Lake Monroe, he said.
“This certainly isn’t something we planned for,” he said. “Restaurants and breweries were not a target industry for us at all a few years ago, but we are going with it.”
Plummer said low rent prices have helped upstart chefs open in Sanford, skipping over more expensive spots in Winter Park or Orlando.
“It would have been pretty tough for us, as mom and pop sole proprietors, to go out on our own and afford something on Park Avenue in Winter Park or compete with the chains in Lake Mary,” said the former manager at Liam Fitzpatrick’s Irish Restaurant in Lake Mary. “We thought we could bring something a little more upscale to the area, and people have responded well.”
The District serves a menu of seasonal dishes such as Mahi Mahi, bourbon-braised pork chops and filet mignon with dinner entrees ranging from $17 to $29.
Tennessee Truffle and The Smiling Bison, which relocated from Orlando in 2015, also are chef-driven restaurants with seasonal menus focused on local ingredients.
“I feel like five years ago there wasn’t much to take us to downtown Sanford,” said Matt Tolley, a warehouse manager who lives west of Interstate 4 and has patronized the new eateries. “Now there are a lot of great restaurants, and I’m going to Sanford with my wife to eat instead of Winter Park or Orlando.”
Most of the growth has been organic, with renovations to older, unused buildings, Turks said. That will change in the coming months with projects such as the 5.5-acre waterfront project Heritage Park. The public-private partnership project calls for 38,000 square feet of restaurants and retail, along with 235 apartments. The $50 million project should start later this year and open in 2021.
Sanford’s development board also has approved $88,000 for the $500,000 downtown project spearheaded by Nation. Plans on that project call for the renovation of two buildings and the construction of a twostory, outdoor seating area.
Restaurant growth also is being aided by growth in nearby cities, said Theo Hollerbach, owner of the popular German eatery Hollerbach’s Willow Tree Cafe. Sanford is a close drive for more than 150,000 residents north of Lake Monroe in the west Volusia County area, he said, and he estimates that about half of his customers come from that area.
“We get plenty of people from Sanford and Lake Mary, but it seems these days more than half of our customers are coming from Deltona and that area,” Hollerbach said. “For some reason people love to travel south.”
Willow Tree Cafe, which has been open for years, is preparing to start another expansion that would make the restaurant 36,000 square feet with more than 900 seats, he said.
Tuffy’s Cidery and Bottle Shop opened at the end of March to join the four breweries already in the downtown district. They are joining Inner Compass Brewing and Deviante Wolfe Brewing, which also opened in recent months.
“You can have quite the little brewery crawl here,” said Tuffy’s owner Dan St. Pierre, who also owns the brewery Central 28 Beer Co. in DeBary. “I was never worried about having too much competition because we just want more people to come here. It makes it a destination and that’s good for all of us.”