Bradley Edmonson has a routine that has nothing to do with grooming dogs. Edmonson works at Sittin Pretty on Broadway, and when an older client picks up their dog, he often walks out to the curb, stands in the road, and holds the car door so they can climb in without stepping into traffic. He told a local news crew this summer that he does it because Broadway has never really been built for people on foot, just people passing through in cars.
That detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because the City of Kissimmee has decided to do something about it. Starting in 2027, Broadway is set to lose half its driving lanes on purpose. The city is betting that making downtown slightly harder to drive through will make it a place people actually want to be, and a handful of dated, very specific projects this summer show exactly how that bet is supposed to pay off.
The math behind the road diet
Broadway currently carries about 22,000 vehicles a day, according to a July 2026 report on the project. A city-commissioned study found 15 pedestrian or bicyclist crashes along the corridor in the past five years. The plan on the table would take Broadway from two lanes in each direction down to one, add a roundabout at Ruby and Stewart, widen the sidewalks, and add a bike lane.
Here is the number that explains why the city thinks this is worth the disruption: FDOT modeling for 2030 projects that cutting Broadway's capacity would redistribute 46 percent of its current traffic onto other roads, mainly John Young Parkway. Almost half the cars using Broadway right now aren't stopping downtown at all. They're using it as a shortcut.
Ray Parsons, whose family has owned and developed more than 50 buildings downtown over the decades, including 1881 Restaurant and Bar, put it plainly at the city's July 16 public meeting:
"So people tend to use this as a cut-through going to other areas. They're really not coming downtown. They're just trying to get to their final destination."
That is the actual thesis of the road diet. It isn't a beautification project. It's an attempt to stop treating a commercial main street like a highway bypass, even if that means some drivers get annoyed and some trips get longer.
Not everyone is convinced the trade is worth it. Resident Lydia Gilmore told reporters at the same meeting she worries about where the displaced traffic goes: "By having less lanes and more traffic, I just am a little skeptical about how that's going to all work out for everybody." Downtown worker Tiffany Pineiro made a similar point, noting John Young Parkway is already backed up before you add Broadway's overflow to it.
What you'll actually see this month, and what you won't
If you're picturing orange cones on Broadway this week, that's not where things stand. As of the city's own July 16 public meeting, officials confirmed Phase 1 construction won't begin until 2027, a year later than the summer 2026 start date floated in earlier city communications and construction-bid listings. Phase 1 covers Broadway from Neptune Road to Ruby Avenue. Phase 2, covering Emmett Street and Main Street, comes after that.
The total price tag has also moved depending on which city document you read. A 2025 release put the full project at $16.3 million. The most recent coverage from the July meeting cites a figure closer to $29.9 million. Either way, this is a multi-year, multi-agency project funded jointly by FDOT's Local Agency Program, the city, and the Toho Water Authority, and it is still in the public-input and bidding stage, not the construction stage.
So what you'll notice downtown this month has nothing to do with lane closures. It has to do with what's opening in the buildings along that same stretch of road.
The building getting ready for foot traffic that isn't here yet
At 30 Broadway, a squat masonry building that has been a bank, then Goolds Western Wear, then Hatfield's sports bar and grille, then most recently a public adjustor's office, is being converted into Nosso Quintal Brazilian Bar & Grill. The Downtown Kissimmee Community Redevelopment Agency approved a $76,000 grant toward the roughly $760,000 renovation, 10 percent of eligible construction costs under the Pioneer Project Incentive Program.
Owner Luca Martins, operating as Souza & Martins Savory Bites, is aiming for an August 2026 opening. The renovation modernizes the building's mechanical and electrical systems while keeping the original concrete bank vault in place as part of the design. City officials estimate the restaurant will create 25 to 40 jobs.
The detail worth sitting with is buried in the fine print of the grant itself. The Pioneer Project Incentive Program specifically rewards projects that generate foot traffic through monthly public events and outdoor activations, not just a new tenant filling an empty storefront. Martins has said he plans live music and scheduled events built around the idea of a Brazilian "quintal," or backyard gathering space. The city isn't just subsidizing a restaurant. It's subsidizing a business model built around people lingering on the sidewalk, which is the same behavior the Broadway road diet is trying to encourage with concrete and paint instead of a grant check.
Two hotels are betting on the same thing, at a much bigger scale
Downtown Kissimmee has never had a hotel built specifically for it. That's about to change twice over. Azure Hotel International, the company behind Lake Nona's Wave Hotel, is developing a $180 million, 300-room hotel and a new 45,000-square-foot convention center at 201 E. Dakin Street, on the site of the current Civic Center. Renderings unveiled in March 2026 show a curved-glass tower with a rooftop bar overlooking Lake Tohopekaliga, and the developer has said hotel construction is targeted to begin in early 2027, following Civic Center demolition planned for the first half of 2026.
A few blocks away, Skyview Companies is building a $31 million project at 92 Pleasant Street, next to the Toho Square parking garage, that pairs a 128-room Sonesta hotel with residential condominiums.
Neither project makes sense if downtown Kissimmee stays a place cars drive through to get somewhere else. A convention hotel and a boutique Sonesta are both bets that people will want to walk out the front door and find something worth walking to, which loops right back to the restaurant opening two blocks away and the road diet designed to make that walk safer.
What hasn't changed, and is proof the bet already half-works
None of this is theoretical for one night a month. On the first Friday of every month, from 4 to 9 p.m., the Kissimmee Valley Farmers Market sets up at Lakefront Park in front of the Makinson-Carson American Legion Post 10 building. Kissimmee Main Street runs it, and it typically draws 15 to 20 local vendors. Regulars include Tashonda Bryant of Natural Essence, who started making soap after her son found relief from acne with a handmade batch and turned it into a full line of body butters and pet conditioners, and Pastor Dairene Figueroa of Thirty One Boutique, whose jewelry sales support women rebuilding their lives in the Dominican Republic. August's edition carries a Back to School theme.
That market already proves the underlying idea works on a small scale. Put a wide sidewalk, a lake view, and something worth stopping for in front of people, and they'll show up on foot, no road diet required. The city and its private developers are essentially trying to stretch that one Friday night into a permanent condition along Broadway.
If you live downtown, the next twelve months are worth watching closely, not because a single project will change your block overnight, but because the road work, the restaurant grant, and the two hotel deals are all pointing at the same outcome from different directions. The traffic study, the CRA's own funding language, and the hotel investment all say the same thing in different vocabularies: downtown Kissimmee is done being a road you drive through, and it's starting to plan itself around the fact that you might actually want to stay.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own street, your commute, or the value of what you own downtown, that's exactly the kind of local question we like getting. The HomePlace Team tracks these Osceola County projects as closely as we track comparable sales, because they tend to move both. Reach out any time, or get your free home valuation to see where your property stands today.
