In late January 2025, printer paper appeared in several windows of the building at Atlantic and Ocean boulevards. The signs read "Unfortunately, we have permanently closed" and thanked the Atlantic Beach community for "30+ years." The number undersold it. Ragtime Tavern had been pouring at that corner since 1983.
River Restaurant Group had scheduled a Sept. 30 groundbreaking at the same building for Grafton & Fleck's, which its media invitation calls "an upscale steakhouse and rooftop lounge." The Jax Daily Record reports an expected opening in early 2027. That leaves the Corner without its anchor for roughly two years. A Ragtime Friday was three separate evenings sharing one address, and the three have been settling into different rooms around the Town Center.
What one Friday at Ragtime actually held
Ragtime began in 1983 with 12 tables and a single bar. Brothers Tom and Bill Morton grew it into a larger dining room and bar, then added the Taproom. By the 1990s the Taproom had become the first microbrewery in the Jacksonville area, according to Florida Beer News and Folio Weekly. Weekends brought live music. The menu leaned on New Orleans-inspired food, including red beans and rice and coconut shrimp.
The Duval County Property Appraiser dates the building to 1927, so all of that growth happened inside a shell that was already more than half a century old. Dinner, a band and a late bar stool could all coexist because the place was assembled room by room over decades.
The ending was abrupt. According to the Jax Daily Record, SPB Hospitality sold Ragtime, Seven Bridges Grille & Brewery in Tinseltown and three other properties to Kelly Companies of Southern California in December 2024. SPB sold the businesses and did not own the buildings. Ragtime closed one month later.
Where each piece of the night sits now
The pieces of a Ragtime evening each have a closest match within a few blocks.
| The Ragtime piece | The closest match today | What the sources say |
|---|---|---|
| Sit-down dinner with a crowd | Coop 303, and Grafton & Fleck's once it opens | Coop 303 calls itself a beachside steakhouse. Grafton & Fleck's plans show 158 first-floor seats. |
| Live music upstairs from dinner | Living Room Lounge at Coop 303 | Visit Jacksonville describes an upstairs lounge with live music and cocktails. |
| The covered patio on a good night | Rooftop dining at Coop 303, and a planned rooftop at Grafton & Fleck's | Coop 303 has a rooftop dining area. The new plans add 42 open-air and 44 covered rooftop seats. |
| The late stool | The Grande, 42 East Coast Drive | DJ Thursday through Saturday, plus a late-night happy hour Sunday through Thursday from 10 PM. |
| House-brewed beer | No match in the reporting | None of the coverage of Grafton & Fleck's mentions a brewery. |
Coop 303 is worth a second look, because the Corner already has a steak-and-rooftop room. Its own site describes a whiskey list of more than 50 varieties and a weekend brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. that includes a 12-ounce grilled New York strip. Visit Jacksonville lists it as a two-story restaurant with rooftop dining and a modern Southern menu. Once Grafton & Fleck's opens, the Town Center will have two rooftop dining rooms, and only one of them will be new.
The Grande took the late slot. The Beaches Town Center's own posts describe it as a craft cocktail bar in Suite 102 on East Coast Drive, with a nightly happy hour before 7 p.m. that takes $2 off cocktails and $1 off everything else. It arrived in fall 2025, months after Ragtime went dark, and it reaches its busiest hours after dinner tables turn over. That was also when Ragtime's Taproom filled up.
What the plans say about the new building
The permit drawings the Jax Daily Record reviewed in March 2026 show a 158-seat first-floor dining room and a private dining room with 20 more. A second-story addition would hold rooftop dining with 42 open-air seats and 44 under cover. That adds up to 264 seats on paper, in a building that started as a 12-table bar. The architect of record is Cronk Duch Architecture of Jacksonville.
The restaurateurs are Jeff McCusker and Bob Fleckenstein. They also run River & Post at 1000 Riverside Ave. in Riverside and River & Fort in St. Augustine, and the Jax Daily Record's latest report adds SAINT, an Italian restaurant in downtown St. Augustine. The name comes from McCusker's middle name, Grafton, paired with Fleckenstein's surname.
Ragtime grew by accretion, one addition after another. Grafton & Fleck's is a single plan drawn from the start with the rooftop and the dining room in mind.
Folio Weekly's April 2026 look at Beaches nightlife put the shift this way, describing a move from live music and beer-stained rooms to fine dining and $50 steaks. The same piece notes the closing of Fly's Tie, a pub on Sailfish Drive that had served Atlantic Beach for 30 years. Read next to Ragtime, that adds up to a run of long-standing rooms changing hands within a short stretch.
What nobody has said yet
Reporters have covered the permits, the seat counts and the operators. No one has published a menu, a chef, a price range or a firm opening date. "Early 2027" comes from the Daily Record's reporting on the project's schedule. The public filings that Hoodline and the Daily Record reviewed carried no cost estimate and no construction timeline.
The question worth watching is the beer. Ragtime's Taproom made the corner a place where people came for something poured on site. Nothing in the coverage of the new plans says whether a beer program is part of the design.
Between now and opening
Ragtime's replacement is still months out, and the Town Center calendar is full in the meantime.
- Oct. 16 and 17: Beaches Oktoberfest runs at Seawalk Pavilion in Jacksonville Beach, about a bike ride from the Corner. Visit Jacksonville lists Sister Hazel and The Hip Abduction on the lineup.
- Oct. 28, 5 to 7 p.m.: The Beaches Town Center Fall Festival is free and held in the Seahorse Oceanfront Hotel parking lot at 1st Street and Atlantic Boulevard. It includes trunk-or-treating from decorated golf carts and a costume contest. The Beaches Town Center Agency and Merchants Association is the lead sponsor.
- Every weekend: Coop 303 serves brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The Grande's DJ nights run Thursday through Saturday.
Hours and specials change, so check each venue before heading out.
The Beaches Town Center Agency, the volunteer nonprofit behind the fall festival, formed in 1991. It was founded to add landscaping, benches, bike racks and the brick sidewalks that still line the blocks around the Corner. The steakhouse will be the newest addition to a district that residents have been building for more than three decades.
If you have a Ragtime memory, or a question about what is being built at the Corner, Michael Wright and Suzi Ford serve the Beaches and would like to hear it. Contact Us.
