Walk Northwood Road on the fourth Friday of any month and you already know the rhythm. Free wine tastings spill onto the sidewalk between 6 and 9 p.m., local artists set up along 24th and 25th Streets, and the same half-dozen restaurants anchor the block between North Dixie Highway and Broadway. That part of Northwood Village hasn't changed in years. What has changed, finally, is the empty lot everyone walks past to get there.
For most of the last decade, the 4.68-acre parcel at 2501 Pinewood Avenue sat fenced off and empty, known mostly by its planning nickname, the Anchor Site. Earlier this year, that lot finally got a confirmed tenant attached to it, and anyone walking to a Northwood Village event this fall will be walking past that news for the first time. The tenant isn't what most people who live here would have guessed.
A Corner That's Been In Progress Since 2018
The city's Community Redevelopment Agency put out a call for proposals on the Anchor Site back in 2018, looking for a developer who could turn a vacant CRA-owned parcel into what the agency described as a "Village Square" for Northwood. Immocorp Ventures won that process in 2019, the development and lease agreement was approved in September 2020, and the project now known as The District at Northwood cleared site plan approval in 2022. Construction has been underway since 2024.
That's a long runway for anyone who's lived here through it. It's also why the sign that went up this spring matters more than it would in a neighborhood where things move faster.
The Tenant Nobody Predicted
In March, Colliers announced that ELEV8TION Fitness had signed a 7,617-square-foot lease as the first confirmed retailer at The District at Northwood, a 10-year deal for what will be the fitness brand's first physical location in West Palm Beach. The building itself is designed by Kobi Karp and will eventually hold 382 apartments across a nine-story tower and two four-story buildings, wrapped around roughly 60,000 to 64,000 square feet of ground-floor retail (reports from the brochure, the CRA, and Colliers have varied slightly as the leasing plan was finalized) plus a planned grocery anchor.
Here's what makes the fitness studio the interesting detail rather than a footnote. Colliers' own announcement of the deal framed the surrounding market as facing a shortage of high-quality retail space, "especially for food-and-beverage concepts." In a corridor known for its restaurant density, the demand signal pointed toward another kitchen. The first door to actually open pointed somewhere else.
That doesn't mean a restaurant won't be next. Leasing brokers were clear that additional tenants are expected as the building gets closer to its fourth-quarter 2026 delivery. But if you've been assuming the ground floor at Pinewood Avenue will simply extend the same dining scene one block over, the first signed lease says otherwise, at least for now.
What's Already Open, Four Blocks North
While the District has spent years working through approvals, a different project a few blocks away has already delivered. The Spruce, an eight-story apartment building a block north of the Northwood Avenue strip, opened at the start of 2026 and held its official grand opening celebration on June 2. The city put more than $7 million in grants and incentives behind it, and the payoff shows up in the unit mix: 117 of its apartments are set aside as workforce housing, renting as low as $1,496 a month, alongside market-rate units running $2,005 for a one-bedroom, $2,650 for two bedrooms, and $3,455 for three.
The building's other calling card is visual, not financial. Last August, artist Renee Phillips worked with Benjamin Eliansky and Ricardo Dieguez of Chalk and Brush to paint "Color Field of Northwood," an 80-foot abstract mural on The Spruce's side wall, now the tallest mural in the city. If you've driven past it since, you've seen the difference between a rendering and a finished wall.
So the neighborhood currently has two large projects at two very different stages. One delivered a mural and a workforce-housing commitment months ago. The other has already locked in its first tenant and still won't open storefronts until closer to year's end. Living here this fall means watching both timelines at once, not choosing between them.
The Rhythm That Isn't Changing
None of this touches the part of Northwood Village that residents actually show up for every month. The Art & Wine Promenade and the quarterly Nights in Northwood Village run on their own schedule, and that schedule hasn't needed a construction update in years.
| Event | Frequency | Hours | What it centers on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art & Wine Promenade | Monthly, 4th Friday | 6 to 9 p.m. | Free wine tastings, local artists, galleries along Northwood Road, 24th and 25th Streets |
| Nights in Northwood Village | Quarterly | Evening | Open-air night market with 50-plus vendors, live music, local food |
The 2026 quarterly dates land on March 27, June 26, September 25, and November 27, each with its own theme, from a live rock and funk set at the spring edition to what organizers are calling a Fall Celebration for the September date. The restaurant lineup that fills in the gaps between those bigger nights hasn't moved much either: Café Centro for Italian classics and live jazz, Malakor Thai Café, Mestizo Fusion Cuisine for Peruvian dishes, Sunset Bar and Grill, and the Grilled Cheese Gallery for something faster. The Painted Mermaid and Herbs & Earth round out the retail side, one selling Annie Sloan paint, the other stocking fair-trade tea and handmade goods.
That consistency is worth naming on its own. A lot of neighborhoods absorb a wave of new construction and lose the small businesses that gave the area its character in the first place. Northwood's has held.
What September 25 Actually Looks Like This Year
Timing matters here. The city posted word in late June that merchants across Northwood Village were running dining specials, wellness deals, and home-styling discounts through September, an effort to keep foot traffic up through the slower summer months before the fall calendar kicks back in. That stretch runs right up against the Fall Celebration edition of Nights in Northwood Village.
Put it together and the walk to that September 25 night market looks different than it has in past years, not because the promenade itself changed but because of what's now standing along the way. Residents heading toward the vendor tents will pass a finished eight-story building with a finished mural instead of scaffolding, and they'll pass a fenced lot that, for the first time, has a confirmed name attached to its future storefront. Neither of those things existed at this event a year ago. Both were years in the making before they showed up at once.
That's the piece worth knowing if you already live here: Northwood's slow-moving development pipeline and its fast, recurring social calendar have mostly run on separate tracks. This fall is the first time they're visible on the same block at the same time, and the shape of what's actually arriving, a gym before a restaurant, workforce housing before luxury retail, isn't the version most people assumed.
If you're weighing what a home in this stretch of Northwood is actually worth as these projects land, or you're curious how a specific block compares to what's listed nearby, Jefferson Kiely has been tracking this corridor closely enough to walk you through it in real terms. Let's Connect.