Walk the loop at the Circle on any weekday evening and you'll cut across the same gravel and asphalt that's served as unofficial gathering space for Atlantic Beach for decades. It's where people park to grab a drink at Tacklebox Tavern, where families unload beach gear a few dozen steps from Davis Beachwear, where the crowd spills out during Beach Music Week because there's simply room to stand. That informal arrangement is ending, and what replaces it is not one story but two, moving on two different clocks that nobody has synced up yet.
If you've only heard the parking version of this story, you've heard half of it.
What's Actually Under Construction
The half everyone's talking about is The Grove. In February 2026, the Atlantic Beach Town Council unanimously approved a major site plan for two multi-story buildings on the triangular tracts that used to be known simply as the Circle's parking lots. The approved plan calls for:
- Two multi-story buildings with ground-floor golf-cart parking and residential storage
- Roughly 8,000 square feet of commercial space on the second level
- 29 residential units on the upper floors
- Eight single-family condominium units with about 1,295 square feet of additional commercial space on the south side of Atlantic Boulevard
This is private land, owned by a developer rather than the town, and Town Manager John O'Daniel has been clear that the project is being led by the property owner, not by the municipality. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's the reason nobody in town government can tell you when construction actually starts. As of the most recent reporting, there is still no confirmed timeline for breaking ground.
The Parking Math Nobody's Solved
Here's where the story stops being abstract. The lot most directly in the crosshairs sits between Davis Beachwear and Tacklebox Tavern, two of the most recognizable names at the Circle. Patricia Davis, whose family has run Davis Beachwear on Atlantic Boulevard since 1951, has been one of the loudest voices watching the plan move forward. Her concern isn't really about the buildings themselves. It's about what happens to the people who used to park there.
"If you want people to come to our beaches, then you need to show them that, rather than say that. Actions speak louder than words, and when you raise the parking fees and you extend the hours that you have these fees, then they just go places."
That comment lands harder once you know the sequence. The prior summer, the town had already added about 50 new parking spaces at the Circle, paired with higher fees and longer paid hours. Then came the approval that could remove a large share of the two surface lots altogether. For a longtime beachgoer like Tori Boyd of Newport, who brings her toddler son to the Circle twice a week, the calculation is simpler than any council packet: convenient parking close to the sand is what makes the trips workable at all. Take that away and the trip changes, even if nothing else about the beach does.
Some business owners have floated a public parking garage as a fix. It isn't part of the approved plan, and there's no indication it's being seriously pursued.
The Town's Answer Wasn't to Save the Lots
Here's the part of the story that doesn't show up in the parking headlines: while the private Grove buildings move forward on their own uncertain schedule, the town is separately investing in an entirely different piece of ground a short walk away, on the public regional beach access at the Circle, and it's doing so on a hard deadline.
In August 2026, the Town Council directed staff to begin the permitting process through North Carolina's Coastal Area Management Act for a new outdoor gathering space just north of the boardwalk. The plan includes a permanent circular concrete stage about 30 inches high, colorful shade sails, and additional picnic tables and seating. Mayor Danny Navey has said the goal is to have the project finished by May 2027, timed to the town's annual Beach Music Festival.
"One of the beautiful things about it, I think, is it puts the Beach Music Festival closer to the beach."
The festival isn't a minor event to plan around. Its most recent edition, the 12th annual, drew crowds estimated over 5,000 people to the boardwalk at 115 Atlantic Boulevard, with free shuttle service running from remote lots at Carteret Community College, the Town Park, and the DoubleTree because on-site parking was already limited even before any of this construction talk started. Council members have also discussed hiring engineers in the coming months to design a bathhouse and septic system for the same access point, which tells you this isn't a one-season fix. It's meant to be permanent public infrastructure, built specifically to formalize what a gravel lot used to do informally.
Two Timelines, One Guess
Put the two projects side by side and the mismatch is the real story:
- The Grove sits on private land, has no confirmed construction start date, and its final scale depends on decisions made by a developer who answers to no one's festival calendar.
- The public gathering space sits on town-owned beach access, is already moving through CAMA permitting, and has a mayor publicly attaching a May 2027 target to it.
Residents who assume these two things are coordinated, that the new stage will simply absorb whatever parking the Grove displaces, are working from an assumption nobody in town government has actually confirmed. They're two separate processes, on two separate parcels, run by two separate parties, and the only thing tying them together right now is that they both happen to sit at the same intersection everyone still calls the Circle.
What to Watch This Fall and Winter
If you live here and want to stay ahead of what changes and when, a few concrete things are worth tracking rather than guessing at:
- Whether the Grove developer requests a building permit, which would be the first real signal on a construction start date
- CAMA's response to the town's stage and gathering-space permit application, since Mayor Navey has said the town is confident the permits will come through on schedule
- Any updated location announcement for the 13th Annual Beach Music Festival, which would confirm whether the new stage is actually ready in time for May 2027
- Town Council agenda packets, posted ahead of each meeting on the town's website, where any parking policy changes at the Circle would show up first
None of this changes what the Circle is today. Tacklebox Tavern is still there. Davis Beachwear is still there, 75 years in. The boardwalk still fills up in May. But the next two summers are going to look different depending on which of these two clocks moves faster, and right now, only one of them has a date attached.
If you're watching these changes because you're weighing what they mean for a home near the Circle, or anywhere else on the Crystal Coast, that's a conversation worth having with people who track this stuff for a living. Low Tide Living NC keeps close tabs on what's actually happening in Atlantic Beach, Morehead City, and Beaufort, not just what the listing photos show. Start Your Coastal Search whenever you're ready to talk through what a changing neighborhood means for your next move.
