Sunny Isles Beach This Summer: The Pier Is Open Again, and So Is Everything Under It

For fourteen years, the block at 16701 Collins was a pass-through. The old Newport Beachside sat behind construction fencing and a pier most residents assumed would never reopen. This summer, the same address is where a lot of people who already live in Sunny Isles are ending their Saturday.

The property reopened on November 1, 2025 as The Sunny, Curio Collection by Hilton, still family-owned and holding onto the Newport name for the pier itself. It brought back a 776-foot walk over the Atlantic that had been closed off from the general public for years, and it did something less expected too: it filled its ground floor with six food and beverage rooms that residents can walk into without a reservation, a room key, or a $50 resort day pass.

That is the shift this summer. Not a new tower. Not a new mall. A functional block, at the north end of the two-mile beach, that residents can actually use.

The Pier Is the Point

The Newport Fishing Pier is the longest public pier in Miami, and for most of the last decade it has been either behind a gate, structurally compromised, or half-open on a schedule nobody could predict. It is now walkable end to end during posted daylight hours, and there is a restaurant on top of it.

That restaurant, called The Pier, sits directly over the Atlantic. According to the operator's own launch materials reported by Boutique Hotelier, it is the only pier restaurant in Miami built on top of the ocean itself, not adjacent to it. If you have lived here long enough to remember eating at the old Newport Pub deck, the room is not the same, but the view is: nothing but water on three sides.

Six food and beverage concepts opened with the property. Each has a distinct role for someone who lives within walking distance:

• ¡VIVA! by Ray Garcia is the anchor. Chef Ray Garcia ran Broken Spanish and B.S. Taqueria in Los Angeles and was named Esquire's Chef of the Year for his California-Mexican cooking. Sunny Isles is his first Miami restaurant, following the Resorts World Las Vegas original.
• The Pier is the over-the-ocean room, built for sunset and slow dinners.
• Julene is the property's main American kitchen, positioned as a neighborhood room rather than a hotel dining room.
• Lovebirds Café is the bodega-coffee shop hybrid on the ground floor, useful for the morning walk crowd.
• Citrus Shack is the poolside counter, inspired by the old Florida roadside fruit stands.
• An adults-only lounge sits above the pool deck for the after-nine crowd.

The important thing for a resident is not that six rooms opened. It is that the ground floor is porous. You can walk in from the beach, get a coffee at Lovebirds, and keep going. The Newport site used to be a wall between the north end of Sunny Isles Beach and everything south of it. It is not anymore.

Ray Garcia Is the One to Pay Attention To

Miami has plenty of Mexican restaurants. It has fewer restaurants where the chef built his reputation on regional Alta California cooking, moved a national concept from Las Vegas, and picked Sunny Isles as the entry point instead of Wynwood or Brickell.

Garcia draws from coastal Mexican traditions, particularly the Alta California region's bright, bold flavors, creating a menu that feels both familiar and surprising.

That framing, from Las Vegas Magazine's review of the original ¡VIVA!, is the one to hold onto. The Sunny Isles room is not a taqueria and not a Tulum-style beach concept. It is a wood-grilled snapper zarandeado, yellowtail with leche de tigre and puffed rice kind of restaurant. It reads as a bet that the neighborhood is ready to support that kind of cooking without a bridge trip to Brickell or the Design District.

Whether the bet works is a summer-long test. The signal to watch is weekday dinner. Weekend covers at a new hotel restaurant tell you nothing. A full room on a Tuesday in August, when the tourist bookings soften, tells you the residents came back.

The Rest of the Summer Table Is Still There

The block did not exist in isolation. The rest of the Sunny Isles dining spine held its ground through the Newport dormancy, and most of the anchors are still doing what they have always done.

Il Mulino at Acqualina finished a full renovation and is running its Champagne experience menu with Taittinger through July 31, 2026. Avra Estiatorio, the Greek room at the Estates at Acqualina, is still the fish-flown-daily-from-the-Mediterranean move for a birthday. La Cabrera's Sunny Isles location was chef Gastón Riveira's first Miami parrilla and remains the reference point for asado on the strip. Baires Grill, the Argentine steak room a block off the beach, still runs the 4-to-7 happy hour Monday through Friday. BALEENkitchen at Solé Miami is still where you take an out-of-town parent for a waterfront lunch that will not require a jacket.

None of this is new information for anyone who has lived here more than a year. The point is that The Sunny arrives into a working ecosystem, not an empty one. That matters for the arithmetic of a summer weekend: you do not have to choose between the new place and the old ones. The distances are short enough that you can do both.

The Park Calendar Is Doing Its Job

The city-run programming stayed steady while the private side was under construction. Samson Oceanfront Park, the 2.1-acre stretch just south of the pier, is still hosting a Wednesday Outdoor Concert Series on the dedicated stage and a Yoga Under the Moon session on the sand. Beach Yoga on the Beach continues near the Newport Fishing Pier, an 8 a.m. class open to all levels that has been running as a Parks and Recreation regular.

Heritage Park, the four-acre urban park with the Veterans Wall, the splash pad, and the second performance stage, keeps its own concert schedule. Gateway Park runs monthly live concerts on its large stage. Senator Gwen Margolis Park has the soccer field and the leash-free Bone Zone dog run west of Collins. The city event calendar lists the specific dates.

The free SIBshuttle still connects the residential towers to Aventura Mall and Hallandale Beach on a fixed loop, which is the part most new arrivals do not realize exists. If you live in one of the north-end condos and want to skip the Collins Avenue drive on a Saturday, the shuttle is the answer.

The Wider Summer, Compressed

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is running at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens through mid-July, drawing traffic and hotel demand south and west of the county. Sunny Isles is not a host site, and the local calendar is not built around it, which is the point. The neighborhood's summer 2026 story is quieter and closer to home: a reopened block, a walkable pier, and a park programming schedule that assumes residents will keep showing up.

A Realistic Summer Saturday, North of 172nd

If you are trying to plan an actual day rather than read a general overview, this is the geography that now works on foot from the north-end condos:

1. Coffee and a pastry at Lovebirds Café before the beach fills up.
2. Yoga on the sand at Samson Oceanfront Park, or a walk out to the end of the Newport Fishing Pier and back, roughly a mile round trip.
3. Lunch at Citrus Shack poolside if you are staying casual, or BALEENkitchen at Solé Miami if you want to sit down.
4. Late-afternoon nap, then the Wednesday concert at Samson if the day lines up, or a walk south along the beach path.
5. Dinner at ¡VIVA! by Ray Garcia, then a drink at The Pier over the water for the last of the light.
6. Nightcap at the adults-only lounge upstairs, or back home along Collins.

The list is not the point. The point is that the list is possible without a car, which was not true this time last year.

When You Are Ready to Look at the Block Itself

Reopened anchor properties change the walking radius of a neighborhood, which is one of the quieter drivers of long-term value on a barrier island. The condos immediately north and south of 16701 Collins are the ones whose ground-floor experience just changed the most, and the resale question is worth asking with someone who has walked the buildings recently.

If you live here and want to talk through what the reopening means for your specific tower, or you are watching the north end for a first purchase, Martina Kanianska works this stretch of Collins Avenue directly. Let's Connect.