If you have driven down East Lake Avenue anytime in the last few months, you have probably noticed the paper on the windows at 117. That building sat as Craven Copper for years, then went dark, and for a while the space felt like the missing tooth in downtown's smile. It is not missing anymore. Two separate restaurants are moving into that single address this year, and together they are going to shift what an ordinary Saturday evening looks like within walking distance of Auburndale Downtown Park.
That is the story worth telling. Not a roundup of unrelated openings, but the fact that one previously empty building is about to house both a Modern American concept with a live-music bandstand and a full-scale Cajun kitchen. If you already live here, you have watched downtown try this before. This time the timing is different, because the building is not opening one door. It is opening two.
The 117 East Lake Avenue Story
The larger of the two tenants is The Abigaile. A new Modern American Cuisine restaurant from Chef Tina Calhoon, it was targeting a mid-June opening at 117 East Lake Avenue. The Abigaile is going into the former Craven Copper restaurant and brewery space. The scale is what stands out. It will be a full-service restaurant with a craft bar, indoor and outdoor seating, and live music, with about 80 seats inside and 80 seats outside, including an indoor bar with about 13 seats and an outdoor bar with about 12 seats. The outdoor area will also include a covered bandstand for live music on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as Saturday and Sunday during the day.
For a downtown that has mostly offered breakfast counters and lunch spots, a 160-seat restaurant with weekend live music in the courtyard is a different animal. The menu leans that way too. Early menu highlights include confit wings cooked in Nueske's bacon fat and tossed in Korean ginger sauce, a chicken shawarma salad with seared chicken, tomatoes, pickled onions, hummus, grilled halloumi and tahini yogurt dressing, and The Abigaile Sea Bass with verbena beurre blanc, lemon Parmesan potatoes, charred broccolini and cherry tomatoes.
Then there is the second tenant, sharing the same address in Suite 101. Called Bebos Cajun Kitchen, this new spot is opening at 117 E Lake Ave, Suite 101, with owner Phillip Robinson telling What Now, "We're going to be serving Cajun-style food." The menu he described is straightforward and, for this town, genuinely rare. "Po Boys, Shrimp & Grits, Jambalaya, Gumbo. It's a unique place for the Polk County area. For Louisiana-style food, we have to go to Lakeland."
Read that quote again if you live here. The owner is saying the closest bowl of gumbo has historically required a drive to Lakeland. That gap is what makes this open worth paying attention to. Bebos will feature green, gold, and black coloring, comfortable booths, and indoor and outdoor seating for a total of about 130 guests. No official opening date has been set yet, but Robinson says the restaurant is working toward the goal of a late-September launch.
Here is what those two tenants look like next to each other:
| The Abigaile | Bebos Cajun Kitchen | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 117 E Lake Ave | 117 E Lake Ave, Suite 101 |
| Style | Modern American, craft bar | Cajun, Louisiana |
| Approximate seats | ~160 indoor and out | ~130 indoor and out |
| Live music | Covered outdoor bandstand, weekends | Not announced |
| Target open | Mid-June 2026 | Late September 2026 |
One building. Roughly 290 seats when both are running. A bandstand on one side, a gumbo pot on the other. That is a real change in what a resident can do on foot after 7 p.m.
Why the Address Matters More Than the Openings
Downtown Auburndale has never really had a critical-mass problem with restaurants opening. It has had a critical-mass problem with restaurants opening within a block of each other, at hours when people actually want to be out. A single new spot can struggle because nobody plans an evening around one door. Two doors at the same address, opening the same year, is how a downtown gets a second wave of foot traffic without waiting for a decade of infill.
The 117 E Lake Ave address sits near Downtown Auburndale Park, which matters because the park is already where the reliable crowd shows up. The First Saturday Downtown Auburndale Market runs on the first Saturday of every month, with over 40 local vendors, in a free community event. It runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Auburndale Downtown Park, 200 E Park St.
Do the geometry. First Saturday morning at the park. Coffee and vendors. Then a walk two minutes east and you are at the door of a full-service restaurant with an outdoor bandstand. By late September, you can add gumbo to the same walk. The downtown finally starts to work as a connected loop instead of a series of separate stops.
The Other Engine: Camp Margaritaville
The second thing changing Auburndale's calendar has nothing to do with downtown. It is out on the Camp Margaritaville side of town, and if you moved here in the last two years you probably still think of that resort as a place for guests, not neighbors. The public event schedule says otherwise. Most of it is open to the community, and much of it is free.
A short list of what has been on the calendar for residents this year:
- Small Business Sunday Paradise Market, held on select Sundays, featuring 40+ local vendors with handcrafted items, with admission always free and everyone invited.
- Pitmasters in Paradise, a KCBS-sanctioned professional BBQ competition, running April 24–25, 2026 at Camp Margaritaville Auburndale as a stop on the Triple Crown series.
- The 4th Annual Cinco de Mayo Margarita Run, featuring a 5K race and a 1-Mile Run/Walk with a scenic route through Camp Margaritaville and Lake Myrtle Park.
- The AKA Pro-Am Freestyle Kneeboard Competition on Fri 21 Aug 2026.
Two of those events, the Paradise Market and the downtown First Saturday Market, both pull 40-plus local vendors. That is not coincidence. It is the same regional maker economy showing up in two different parts of town on two different weekends, which means a resident who wants to shop small has options almost every weekend of the month without leaving the 33823 zip code.
The Chain Story on US-92
None of this means the highway corridor is standing still. Culver's, the Wisconsin-based fast casual restaurant, is bringing its ButterBurgers and frozen custard to Auburndale, with franchise owner Nathan Devine filing applications with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation for a restaurant to be located at U.S. Highway 92 West. The site is under construction, and an opening date has not been set.
The Culver's build is worth mentioning only as a contrast. The US-92 side of Auburndale keeps adding what a busy highway gets: national chains with drive-thrus. The downtown side is adding what a downtown gets when it works: independent operators taking bigger and stranger swings. Both are useful. They are not the same product.
Building Your Next Saturday
Try this as a mental exercise. Pick a Saturday in October, after Bebos has opened. Park once, near the Downtown Park at 200 E Park St. Walk the First Saturday Market in the morning. Come back at six, and you have a choice between Cajun food in Suite 101 or Modern American with a band playing on the covered patio next door, both inside the same building. That is not a hypothetical downtown. That is what the current construction paperwork is describing.
The reason to pay attention now, before either place is fully open, is that the rhythm of a place changes fastest when residents show up on opening weekends. First-year traffic tells operators whether to add lunch service, whether to expand the outdoor bar, whether the Sunday brunch idea earns its keep. The people who actually live within a short drive get the largest vote in what downtown feels like a year from now.
If you have been thinking about what Auburndale looks like as a place to plant longer roots, this is a good year to watch. The evening version of downtown is being drawn in real time, and it is being drawn on a single block. If you would like to talk through what the shift around downtown means for a specific street or a specific home, Paula Shields knows the ground here well. Schedule Your Free Consultation and let's talk about what your next move in Auburndale could look like.
