Christa Rummel spent about twenty years working in restaurants before she got the call that Country Kitchen, the diner that had anchored 25335 W. Newberry Rd. for years, was closing. She grew up in Newberry. She knew what the town would lose if that space went dark, so she bought it and opened Capricious on January 1, 2024, filling the old counter with books from her grandparents' library and painting the walls blue and gold as a nod to her grandfather's Navy service and the local high school colors. She told Mainstreet Daily News she wanted a place where neighbors "could experience each other and make new friends that maybe live down the street that they've never met."
That single storefront turnover is a small story. But it points at something bigger happening across town. Newberry's social center of gravity is no longer just the century-old strip of Main Street storefronts. A second cluster, built from scratch a few miles away, is filling in fast enough that residents now have two real answers to "where should we go tonight," not one.
Two Blocks, Two Different Jobs
The original Main Street is the historic downtown corridor around Newberry Rd. and the municipal complex, the block where Capricious sits inside a building Rummel says is 120 years old, alongside Farmhouse 1906 and Honey's Main Street Cafe. It runs on inherited architecture and a deliberate events calendar.
The newer cluster is CountryWay Town Square, a Norfleet Homes development with its sales office at 1739 SW 248th Dr. Norfleet's own description of the project is specific about the goal: homes placed within walking distance of a butcher shop, a boutique, a neighborhood gym, and restaurants, all designed around golf-cart-friendly streets rather than the highway-adjacent strip pattern most of Alachua County built on. One of the first named tenants to open there is Tortillas Tex Mex, which describes itself as Newberry's newest full-service Tex-Mex spot, tucked into the town square instead of a standalone pad site off Newberry Rd.
These two blocks aren't fighting for the same errand. Historic Main Street is where the festivals happen and where the century-old storefronts pull people in for an evening out. CountryWay is where the everyday stuff, a haircut, a workout, a rotisserie chicken, is supposed to happen without anyone getting in a car. Newberry hasn't replaced one with the other. It's running both at once, which is a different kind of small town than the one most people picture when they hear "downtown revitalization."
The Nonprofit That Runs Main Street Like A Calendar
Here's the part that doesn't show up in a typical visitor guide: the historic downtown's momentum isn't organic foot traffic. It's engineered by a specific nonprofit, the Newberry Main Street Organization, which is affiliated with the national Main Street America network built to reenergize small-town commercial districts. This group doesn't just throw parties. It runs its calendar the way a marketing department would, with events sized deliberately for different purposes.
The clearest evidence is in the numbers themselves. In February 2025, the organization's Blues and BBQ Festival, a free event with live music, a barbecue competition, and a car show hosted by the local club Gainesville Street Rods, brought 11,000 people into downtown Newberry in a single day, according to The Independent Florida Alligator. That same year's fall event, the 3rd Annual Fabulous 50's Festival & Car Show, was intentionally built smaller. Main Street Organization president Chris Mack described it as something small to "kind of bring us into the holiday season," and the group scaled it back to 20 vendors instead of its usual 200 so the festival could find its footing before growing.
That's a nonprofit running two different plays with two different goals, one built to maximize a single day's turnout and one built to ease a town into its slow season, using the same historic block as the venue both times. Gainesville Street Rods, the 163-member car club that shows up for both events, has been active for more than 40 years, and according to club president Scott Mello, its March car show alone has raised over $11,000 for children's cancer research. At its 2025 Newberry appearance, the club also collected donations for Homes 4 Heroes and gathered clothing for Gainesville's St. Francis House. The festivals aren't just entertainment. They're a funding mechanism wearing a costume.
What's Actually New This Fall
The next test of that strategy lands on September 19, 2026, when the Newberry Main Street Organization hosts the 4th Annual Fabulous 50's Festival & Car Show in Historic Downtown Newberry from 4 to 8 p.m. Gainesville Street Rods returns with its classic car lineup, and Twister H Productions again handles the 50's-era soundtrack. Last year's edition pointed visitors toward dinner at the same downtown restaurants that have become the district's anchors: Honey's Main Street Cafe, Capricious, Farmhouse 1906, Los Avina, and Two Sisters Coffee Co., and there's no reason to expect this year's programming to look any different.
That list matters more than it looks. The festival isn't just tolerating nearby businesses, it's actively routing foot traffic into them as part of the event itself. Compare that to a typical street festival that competes with local restaurants for the same evening dollars, and the difference in approach becomes obvious.
Here's how the two hubs stack up right now:
| Historic Main Street | CountryWay Town Square | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs the calendar | Newberry Main Street Organization (Main Street America affiliate) | Norfleet Homes |
| Signature businesses | Capricious, Farmhouse 1906, Honey's Main Street Cafe, Los Avina, Two Sisters Coffee Co. | Tortillas Tex Mex, with a butcher shop, boutique, and gym planned into the walkable layout |
| Building stock | Century-old storefronts in the historic district | New construction, built for golf-cart access |
| This fall's headline draw | 4th Annual Fabulous 50's Festival & Car Show, Sept. 19, 2026 | New tenants filling in as the town square build-out continues |
The Rest Of Newberry's Fall
The Fabulous 50's Festival isn't the only fixed point on the calendar. Newberry held its 3rd Annual Blues & BBQ Festival in downtown this past February, and the town's other institutions, Champions Park's baseball and softball complex and the Easton Newberry Sports Complex, keep bringing outside visitors through town with tournament weekends spread across the year rather than concentrated into one festival date.
What's worth watching is whether CountryWay Town Square starts running its own version of a calendar the way Historic Main Street does. Right now the new square is still filling in its retail lineup one tenant at a time. Historic Main Street already has generations of storefront history and a nonprofit dedicated to programming it. If CountryWay's restaurant and retail mix keeps growing the way Tortillas Tex Mex's opening suggests it will, Newberry residents may eventually be choosing between two competing Saturday-night calendars instead of one town with a single obvious answer.
For now, the honest read is simpler: Newberry didn't trade its old downtown for a new one. It grew a second one next to it, and neither has to lose for the other to work.
If you're watching how a small town's downtown and its newer developments grow into each other, that same texture shows up in the housing that surrounds both of them. Harder Home Team works Newberry and the rest of North Central Florida every day, and we're always glad to talk through what a specific block looks like from a homeowner's seat. Get Your Home Valuation whenever you're ready to see where your Newberry property fits into that picture.
