Downtown Tavares Is Getting Its First Apartments, and a Trail to Mount Dora

Tavares has always been a seaplane town and a lake town, and for years its downtown was mostly a daytime place: courthouse errands, a festival on the lakefront lawn, and seaplane tours off Wooton Park. That is changing faster than most people realize. In 2026 the city is on the edge of its first downtown apartments above Main Street storefronts, the big lakefront hotel is adding a rooftop bar, and the long-talked-about trail to Mount Dora just cleared its biggest hurdle. Here is where each one stands.

The first apartments above Main Street

Heritage Square is the two-building, mixed-use project diagonally across from Tavares City Hall on Main Street: a four-story building and a three-story building holding roughly 58 market-rate apartments above about 12,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial. The developer won the city's request for proposals, and as of September 2026 permits and pre-construction work were underway, with Tavares' economic development director saying the project was just about ready to break ground. The start slipped from an earlier hoped-for late-summer 2025 date, but the pieces are in motion. It would be the first real residential density in the historic core, and that changes the buyer pool for every listing within walking distance of downtown.

A rooftop bar over Lake Dora

The 66-room hotel built in 2014 as the Key West Resort, now called Citrus on the Lake, is being repositioned as a boutique property by its new owners, and a scenic rooftop bar over the main building was announced in early 2025. A downtown that keeps people around after the seaplane tours dock, with a drink over the water and hotel rooms a block from the lakefront, is a downtown with a reason to be a destination instead of a stop.

The trail to Mount Dora is finally moving

In August 2026 the Lake County Commission voted unanimously to move forward on the Wekiva Trail Extension, acquiring roughly 11 miles of the old CSX rail corridor that connects Sorrento, Mount Dora, and Tavares. The Trust for Public Land holds a 24-month, roughly $27 million option on the 110-acre corridor, and federal BUILD grant applications are being pursued, with a county purchase deadline in spring 2028. It has not broken ground yet, but the land deal was the hard part, and a paved trail along Lake Dora would tie Tavares directly to one of Central Florida's most visited small-town downtowns.

What it means for buyers and sellers

Downtown density and a rail trail are demand stories in any waterfront town. Apartments above the shops bring year-round foot traffic and a new set of buyers who want to walk to dinner and the lake. A trail to Mount Dora opens the door for comparison shoppers who would not otherwise have looked at Tavares at all. For sellers, the takeaway is timing and condition: the neighborhoods closest to downtown and the trail are the ones the new buyers will walk first, and a well-priced, well-presented home near them wins that crowd. For buyers, it is the rare chance to get in near the bottom of a story that is still being built. The Tavares city guide has the full neighborhood and lakefront picture.