Demolition has begun on Brett's Waterway Café, the longtime riverfront restaurant in Fernandina Beach that has faced structural trouble for years after inspectors deemed it structurally unsafe. The building, perched along the city marina, is now coming down as part of a long-delayed push to remake the waterfront.
The teardown was confirmed in reporting from Action News Jax, which reported Wednesday that demolition of the café had begun in Fernandina Beach. The move caps a saga that stretches back more than five years, to when the building was first flagged as a safety hazard.
City Manager Sarah Campbell had confirmed the building would ultimately come down, according to Jacksonville Today, which also reported that the Fernandina Beach City Commission voted unanimously to press for urgency on both the demolition and the future of the site. At the time, the building still had two tenants: a small shop up front and Brett's Waterway Café itself, run by Center Street Restaurant Group, the outlet reported.
A Building Condemned Since 2021
The trouble dates to July 2021, when the restaurant was declared structurally unsafe after an active collapse involving a concrete double-tee structural member, the same reporting from Jacksonville Today noted. The restaurant was given until Sept. 2, 2021, to make repairs. A separate 2021 engineering study found significant deficiencies in the building's foundation, according to News4JAX.
The restaurant group later filed a complaint against the city seeking arbitration, alleging the city wrongfully caused substantial damage to Brett's business, per the same Jacksonville Today report. City officials had not decided what would happen at the site once the building came down, and a company was still evaluating how to demolish the structure without damaging the surrounding docks, the outlet reported. Brett's Waterway Café's last day of operation had been set for Dec. 31, per News4JAX.
Timeline Shifted Before Shovels Hit the Ground
Exactly when the wrecking ball would swing had been something of a moving target. News4JAX reported in March that the building was expected to be torn down sometime in 2026, while Jacksonville Today's reporting around the same time also pointed to 2026. The City of Fernandina Beach's own marina redevelopment page lists a broader project start of summer 2027, timed after the Annual Shrimp Festival, with officials cautioning that work could bring temporary disruptions to marina operations.
That larger Fernandina Beach Marina Redevelopment effort covers more than just the café. According to a solicitation abstract posted on BidNet, the project includes demolishing Brett's, removing debris that has fallen into the river, dredging, and constructing a new pier with an entrance more closely aligned to Center Street. The city also plans to replace the existing boardwalk and a failing bulkhead beneath the café with new concrete and wood construction matching the first phase of the Fernandina Beach Riverfront Resiliency Project, per the same filing.
Financing and What Might Come Next
To pay for demolition and redevelopment, Fernandina Beach commissioners voted 5-0 to accept a $7 million loan from Pinnacle Bank, Action News Jax reported in separate coverage. The same report noted that a city survey found most respondents favored a Landward Restaurant paired with a pier and pavilion as a replacement for Brett's.
Other concepts floated for the site have ranged widely in scope and cost, according to News4JAX: a simple floating dock priced at $365,000, a pier extension and pavilion for nearly $2 million, a restaurant with a dock extension at $1.5 million, or a more elaborate restaurant with pier and pavilion estimated between $2.5 million and $3 million. None of those options has been confirmed as the city's final choice.
Separately, a proposed Riverside commercial complex near the marina is designed to include a riverfront restaurant intended to fill the void left by Brett's closure, according to the Fernandina Observer. That development is envisioned to include a marina, restaurant spaces, seven retail and specialty shops, and roughly 28,000 square feet of commercial buildings, the outlet reported. The broader marina redevelopment is meant to improve riverfront access, the waterfront view corridor, marina operations and resiliency, according to the City of Fernandina Beach.
For now, the only certainty is that the building long synonymous with waterfront dining in Fernandina Beach is being dismantled. What eventually rises in its place along the marina remains an open question for city officials still weighing their options.
