The building at 3951 St. Johns Ave. has been feeding people since before most of Avondale's bungalows had electricity. The Jax Daily Record reports that it started as a grocery store roughly a century ago, the kind of corner market that stocked a neighborhood before anyone called it "Historic Avondale." For nearly a decade it was Ale Pie House, Mario Kocibelli's neighborhood pizzeria, the kind of place where a slice and a beer counted as a Tuesday plan. This winter it becomes Boathouse Avondale, a sushi-forward restaurant from Nathan Stuart and Margo Klar, and the detail that makes the story worth telling isn't that another concept is replacing another concept on St. Johns Avenue. It's that the people opening the new restaurant already owned the building before the old one closed.
That single fact changes what this story actually is: Stuart and Klar bought the building while Ale Pie House was still leasing it, and their restaurant is planned for the space after the lease ended.
Three Businesses, One Address
Avondale's preservation rules mean a building like this one can't just get gutted and reskinned. Any renovation has to work with what's already standing, which is part of why the same four walls have carried three very different businesses without much changing about the shell.
| Era | Business | Rough Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Original use | Neighborhood grocery store | Roughly 100 years ago |
| Second life | Ale Pie House (Mario Kocibelli) | Nearly a decade, through March 2026 |
| Current project | Boathouse Avondale (Stuart and Klar) | Opening around Thanksgiving 2026 |
Ale Pie House isn't disappearing from Northeast Florida. Kocibelli reopened the pizzeria at 1580 Wells Road in Orange Park, targeting a mid-May opening after the St. Johns Avenue lease ended. What ended was its run in a building it never owned.
The Owners Already Had the Keys
Here's the part that gets lost in a quick headline. The 3951 St. Johns Ave. building was the first commercial property Stuart and Klar ever bought, and they bought it while Ale Pie House was still leasing the space. When that lease ended in March 2026, the couple had a choice most landlords face after a long-term tenant moves out: find another tenant, or do something else with the building.
They chose to renovate it themselves, to preservation standards, and then decide what came next. According to Stuart, the goal of the remodel was blending the century-old architecture with a more resort-style feel inside. After making that investment, re-leasing the space to someone else stopped making sense. They plan to open their own restaurant in it instead.
That sequence matters because it means Boathouse Avondale isn't a speculative bet on a hot corridor. It's an operator upgrading a building they already controlled, in a neighborhood where the renovation rules alone make that kind of commitment expensive to walk away from.
Who's Actually Running the Kitchen
Stuart and Klar aren't new to Northeast Florida's seafood scene. Stuart grew up in Jacksonville Beach in a multi-generational commercial fishing family. His grandfather founded the Intracoastal Fisheries market, and his father currently runs Seafood Kitchen in Atlantic Beach. Stuart and Klar opened their first restaurant together, Orange Park Fish House & Oyster Co., in 2018, and have expanded to eight restaurants across Jacksonville and beyond since then, including Boathouse locations in Ponte Vedra Beach, St. Augustine, and Julington Creek, plus Grouper Shacks in St. Augustine and Jacksonville Beach, and New Berlin Fish House & Oyster Co.
The Ponte Vedra Beach location has picked up "best sushi" recognition locally, and Stuart says he wants to set the same bar in Avondale. The Jax Daily Record quoted him: "We're really going to push hard to make it the best sushi in Jacksonville." Sang Won Kim, the brand's director of sushi and executive sushi chef, will lead that program at the new location.
What's Actually Going In
The building's layout puts the sushi bar downstairs and the kitchen upstairs, which changes the menu shape a little compared to other Boathouse locations. Expect less emphasis on hot dishes coming out of the downstairs bar and more focus on the sushi program itself, alongside the seafood dishes the brand is known for elsewhere.
The finished space will seat about 135 people between indoor dining and covered outdoor seating, inside roughly 4,300 square feet of air-conditioned space. When it opens around Thanksgiving, expect a slower rollout on purpose. Stuart has said the restaurant will initially run Wednesday through Sunday, likely dinner only, while the kitchen and staff settle into a rhythm before adding hours.
What's Around It
Boathouse Avondale sits about a half mile from the core of the Shops of Avondale, on a stretch of St. Johns Avenue that's had more turnover this year than most. A few minutes away in Brooklyn, Alder & Oak, a wood-fired Aegean and Mediterranean restaurant from Southern Grounds owner Mark Janasik, has already opened inside the HUB Brooklyn development, a $2.46 million mixed-use project at Riverside Avenue and Forest Street. None of that is competition for Boathouse Avondale so much as evidence of the same thing happening in parallel: older buildings around Riverside and Avondale getting expensive, careful renovations instead of teardowns, because the preservation rules and the neighborhood's character make that the only version of "new" that actually works here.
For a building that's spent a hundred years feeding the same few blocks, that's a fitting way to keep doing it.
If you want more of what's actually changing on St. Johns Avenue and in the neighborhoods around it before it makes the rounds online, Campanaro Group pays attention to this kind of detail as part of working in these communities every day.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
