Live Oak Street has never been where you went to eat. It's where you went to play pickleball at the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Memorial Gymnasium, check out a book at the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library next door, or catch a show at the Live Oak Cultural Center, which runs a regular schedule of programming through the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Council on Aging of Volusia County. The block sits one street back from Canal Street's shops and galleries, close enough to walk to but functionally separate: a civic corner, not a commercial one.
That separation is closing. Two storefronts are opening directly across from each other on Live Oak, and together they're doing something the block hasn't done before: giving residents a reason to end up there after the gym closes and the library goes quiet.
A Sushi Bar and a Coffee Counter, Facing Each Other
At 115 Live Oak St., Ronin Sushi & Bar NSB has opened as the second location of a restaurant that's run for 19 years at 111 W. International Speedway Blvd. in Daytona Beach. Husband-and-wife owners Tung and Tran Nguyen, who were part of the original ownership group when the Daytona location opened in 2006, bought the Live Oak building for $1.3 million in March. They posted their reaction to social media the same month, writing that they were "still in disbelief that we found a second home for Ronin Sushi & Bar in NSB." The menu at the new location mixes new items with favorites carried over from Daytona, including the Kobe beef preparations the original has built its reputation on.
Directly across the street, at 114 Live Oak St., BeeFly Grab N Go Café is finishing the buildout for its own New Smyrna Beach location. BeeFly started in Port Orange and has developed a local following there before making the move. Owners Teresa and Nicolle were, as of this summer, working through inspections and final touches on the space, with breakfast, lunch, and coffee planned for both a quick grab-and-go crowd and customers who want to sit down and stay a while.
Neither business chose this stretch of Live Oak by accident. Both applied for and received city redevelopment grants tied specifically to this address.
The City Put Money Behind This Corner on Purpose
New Smyrna Beach's Community Redevelopment Agency awarded Ronin Sushi Bar NSB $100,000 toward a $258,477 renovation covering roof repair, facade work, parking lot repaving, new doors and windows, patio improvements, signage, and utility upgrades, according to a report from the city's economic development director. That grant covers close to 40 percent of the total project cost. BeeFly Grab N Go Café received $98,283.50 toward $196,657 in improvements, roughly half its build-out budget.
This isn't the first time the city has used redevelopment funds to steer private investment toward a specific stretch of downtown. In 2023, the Community Redevelopment Agency awarded a $250,000 adaptive reuse grant to Cristal Clear Properties LLC to help convert a vacant upholstery warehouse at 501 S. Dixie Freeway into what's now known as the Bowman Center, a retail destination. The Live Oak grants follow the same logic: public money matched against private renovation dollars, aimed at turning underused buildings into active storefronts.
The practical effect for anyone walking Live Oak Street is that two buildings that sat as retail and office space, and in Ronin's case a former upholstery-adjacent structure requiring a full new roof truss system before anything else could happen, are now finished commercial spaces facing each other across a two-lane street that most residents previously used only to park for the gym or the library.
The Rhythm Already Running One Block Over
None of this is landing on empty ground. The Canal Street Historic District, one block from Live Oak, already runs on a schedule residents have built habits around. The Farmers Market sets up every Saturday, rain or shine, at Old Fort Park around 210 Sams Ave., running from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. with produce, baked goods, plants, and local makers. On the second Saturday of each month, Classic Cars on Canal brings antique and specialty vehicles down the street for browsing. Canal Street Nights runs on select third Thursdays with food trucks, vendors, and extended shop hours, and the district also hosts Sip & Stroll evenings and Gallery Walks through the year.
What Live Oak didn't have, until now, was a reason for that same Saturday crowd to keep walking one block further after the market closes or the classic cars pull out. A pickleball match, a library stop, or a Cultural Center program are all daytime activities. Dinner at Ronin, or a coffee stop at BeeFly on the way to an evening event, extends that same foot traffic into hours the block wasn't previously built for.
What a Saturday on This Corner Looks Like Now
Put the pieces together and the block starts to function differently than it did a year ago. A Saturday morning still starts at the Farmers Market on Sams Avenue, coffee in hand, browsing produce and baked goods before the 12 p.m. close. From there, it's a short walk to Live Oak Street, where the City Gym's pickleball courts are already in use and the Cultural Center may have a matinee or an art exhibition running. Where that same route used to end, at the parking lot or back toward the car, it now continues across the street to a sushi dinner at Ronin or a stop at BeeFly for something quick before heading home.
That's a different use of the same two blocks than existed even a year ago, and it didn't happen through organic demand alone. It happened because the city matched private dollars to a specific corner and two business owners, one with two decades of restaurant experience thirty minutes up the coast and one already building a following in Port Orange, decided that corner was worth the investment.
Deetz Luxury Group keeps a close watch on shifts like this one, not because a new restaurant changes what a house is worth, but because it changes how a street gets used, and that's the kind of detail that only shows up when you're paying attention to the block itself. If you're curious about what else is quietly changing in downtown New Smyrna Beach, Deetz Luxury Group is a good place to start that conversation. Schedule a consultation today if you'd like to talk through what these shifts mean for the neighborhood you already call home.
