Dick's Wings Is Becoming an Argentine Steakhouse, and Nocatee Town Center Just Split in Two

The Dick's Wings & Grill that anchored one corner of Nocatee Town Center for years is turning into Asado Life, a live-fire Argentine restaurant with roots in St. Augustine. The announcement came on August 27, and it's the kind of tenant swap that's easy to shrug off as one more restaurant story. It isn't. Put it next to everything else that's changed at Town Center this year and a different picture forms: the place most Nocatee residents still think of as one shopping district has quietly split into two, and the split changes which errands you run where.

The corner you thought you knew

If you've lived in Nocatee for more than a couple of years, your mental map of Town Center probably looks something like this: Publix in the middle, a ring of casual chains around it, maybe a wing spot for game nights. That map is out of date, and not because of one new restaurant. It's out of date because the east side of Town Center, the original core along Crosswater Parkway, has been quietly re-specializing into a dinner-and-drinks destination while a second, separate commercial engine has been building itself from scratch a half mile west.

Start with the east side. Salata, the build-your-own salad and wrap concept, opened its Nocatee location at 641 Crosswater Parkway on April 6. A few blocks over, Coastal Wine & Tapas sits next to Chophouse at Nocatee, the steakhouse and rooftop bar that's been drawing residents upstairs for cocktails since it opened. That pairing isn't an accident of leasing. A wine bar next to a rooftop steakhouse turns a Thursday night into a two-stop evening instead of a single reservation, and now Asado Life is moving into the old Dick's Wings space to add a third serious dinner option to the same stretch. Meanwhile the former Clean Juice storefront east of Crosswater Parkway is becoming Easy Açaí, a family-owned Brazilian açaí concept, expected to open sometime this fall.

None of these are lunch-counter replacements for lunch-counter tenants. Wings became live-fire Argentine grilling. A juice bar became an açaí and smoothie concept with imported ingredients. The east side of Town Center is trading fast-casual turnover for restaurants people plan an evening around.

A half mile west, a second engine starts

While that's happening, an entirely separate commercial node has been assembling itself along Valley Ridge Boulevard. Marketplace at Nocatee's Publix is open now, complete with a Publix Liquors and a pharmacy drive-thru, and SoFresh has been announced as the center's first restaurant tenant, with made-to-order bowls, wraps and smoothies targeted to arrive as summer turned to fall. This isn't an overflow lot for Town Center. It's a second grocery-and-dining anchor built to serve a different part of the daily errand run.

The scale of what's coming next to that same stretch is worth sitting with. The Hub at Nocatee, a 63,225-square-foot open-air marketplace planned adjacent to the Publix, is targeted to open in 2028 with an open-air courtyard, weekend live music, and a curated mix of restaurants and retail. Paul Bissett, the developer behind the project, put it simply when the plans were announced:

"We see The Hub at Nocatee as a place that will bring people together in a meaningful way."

Two years is a long runway, but it tells you where the growth is headed. The east side of Town Center is filling in with dinner destinations. The west side is being built, tenant by tenant, as the everyday-errand district: groceries, quick lunch, and eventually a whole second gathering space that didn't exist five years ago.

Why the split actually matters

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only read each announcement on its own. For most of Nocatee's history, "going to Town Center" meant one trip that covered groceries, a quick meal, and maybe a stop at the wine shop, all within a few hundred yards of each other. That's no longer quite true. If you're picking up groceries and want a fast lunch on the same run, Marketplace at Nocatee is increasingly where that happens, not the original Town Center core. If you're planning an actual dinner out, the east side is where the new options are landing. Regency Centers senior leasing agent Eric Apple said as much when Asado Life's plans were announced, framing the addition as giving residents "another reason to shop and dine close to home." That's true, but it's specifically a dinner-and-drinks reason, not a grab-and-go one.

For a household that's used to treating Town Center as a single stop, this is worth redrawing on purpose rather than discovering by accident. The three hundred and twelve units at Velara, the new apartment community from Thompson Thrift with residents moving in this summer just south of the Marketplace site, are a signal of where that demand is concentrating next. New rooftops tend to pull new tenants toward them, and right now those rooftops are on the west side.

The rhythms that don't care which side you're on

Not everything in Nocatee is being rebuilt around a leasing map. Some of what makes Town Center feel alive doesn't show up in a press release at all. Food Truck Friday remains a standing weekly draw, the kind of low-key evening that pulls people out of the house without requiring a reservation anywhere. And the Nocatee Farmers Market keeps its own rhythm entirely separate from the retail buildout: it runs the third Saturday of every month at Nocatee Station Field, with the next one landing on September 19, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's the kind of fixture that doesn't care whether you're a Town Center regular or a Marketplace regular. Everyone ends up there.

That's worth remembering when a corner you've driven past for years suddenly has a different sign on it. The wing spot becomes a steakhouse. The juice bar becomes an açaí counter. A shopping center that didn't exist three years ago now has its own grocery store, its own quick-lunch spot, and eventually its own gathering space with live music on the calendar. The parts of Nocatee that don't change, like a Saturday morning at the farmers market or a Friday evening with a food truck plate in hand, are exactly what make the parts that do change easy to absorb.

What this means if you already live here

If your routine still treats Town Center as one undifferentiated strip, it's a good week to update it. Groceries and a fast lunch increasingly point west, toward Marketplace at Nocatee. A real dinner out increasingly points to the original Town Center core, where Asado Life will soon sit a few doors from Chophouse and Coastal Wine & Tapas, with Easy Açaí filling in the dessert stop after. And if you want the version of Nocatee that hasn't changed at all, the farmers market at Nocatee Station Field on the third Saturday of the month is still exactly where you left it.

None of this requires a decision, just an updated mental map. The community is still building, the tenants are still landing, and the corner you thought you knew is worth a second look next time you drive past it.

If you're weighing what a changing Town Center means for your own plans in Nocatee or Ponte Vedra, whether that's a move, a sale, or just understanding how a neighborhood like this holds its value as it grows, Pamela Hoffman is a call away. Let's Talk About Your Move.