Suntree Doesn't Leave a Building Empty for Long. It's Pickier About Empty Land.

Walk into the old Charlie & Jake's building on North Wickham Road today and the first thing you'll notice is the bar. It used to sit against the wall. Now it's a big island in the center of the room, and the brewery equipment that once made this address one of Melbourne's first breweries sits visible behind glass again. The kitchen is mostly the same. Everything else got gutted and rebuilt.

That's Bunky's Raw Bar & Brewery, the second location for a family that's run the original Bunky's since 1981. It opened in the old Charlie & Jake's space in late summer 2025, which means the Suntree location is coming up on its first anniversary right around now, no longer the new place in town so much as a spot with its own regulars. A half mile down the same corridor, a very different kind of empty space is at the center of a fight that's pulled in hundreds of Suntree households, and this one has nothing to do with what's on the menu.

Same Corridor, New Owners

Charlie & Jake's Barbecue and Brewery closed in 2022, leaving a 200-plus-seat building with an outdoor patio sitting dark on North Wickham Road for the better part of two years. Colin Jones and Douglas Walker, who own the Indialantic Bunky's and the Indian Harbour Beach restaurant Charlie & Jake's Barbecue, took the space and gutted it. They kept the brewery gear on display and brought in a local brewer, Will Brant, to get the tanks running again. The goal, as Jones described it, is bringing back the integrity of the beers that used to come out of that building, not replacing them with something generic.

A few doors down in Suntree Plaza, a quieter handoff happened around the same time. Niki's Family Restaurant had served the neighborhood for 35 years before closing in May 2025. Mimosa's moved into the space at 6947 North Wickham Road, offering breakfast, lunch, and brunch in a spot regulars had been walking into for three and a half decades.

Two buildings, two long-running restaurants gone, two new operators who chose to build on what was already there instead of starting from a blank slate. Neither handoff drew any organized objection. That matters, because it sets up the contrast that actually explains something about how this neighborhood works.

Two Decades of Neighbors Feeding Neighbors

Suntree's appetite for shared civic effort isn't new. The Suntree Rotary Club has run its Great Tastes at Suntree fundraiser for two decades, and the 21st annual edition returns October 24. It's the kind of event that only works if a neighborhood shows up for it year after year: dozens of local restaurants, including 28 North Gastropub, Grills Riverside, Metro Diner, Fiesta Azteca, Urban Prime, and Nature's Table, set up tasting stations while proceeds go to causes like the Boys & Girls Club of Temple Terrace and the Aerospace and Aircraft Assembly Program at Eau Gallie High School. In a recent year, the club handed each of those two programs an $8,000 check, funding things like summer camp slots for middle schoolers and a NASA field trip built into the aerospace curriculum.

That's not a one-off charity gala. It's the same few hundred households turning out year after year to fund the same kinds of programs, which is worth knowing before you get to the other story unfolding in Suntree right now, because it's the same instinct pointed in a different direction.

The Seventeen Acres Behind Waelti Drive

There's a 17.12-acre wooded parcel at 7400 Waelti Drive, owned by the Manav Mandir Hindu Temple, sitting landlocked next to three established communities: The Villas of Suntree, The Forest of Suntree, and Sunrise at Suntree, representing roughly 313 households. The land is currently zoned Agricultural Residential, which would allow up to six single-family homes. The property owner has applied to rezone it to Single Family Attached Residential, which would permit 82 townhomes, close to fourteen times the density the land currently allows.

Neighbors noticed, and they organized fast. A resident named Wilden started a Facebook group called Save Waelti Lake that's grown past 210 members, and she and her husband, Jeff Thompson, launched a Change.org petition against the rezoning that had collected nearly 1,300 signatures as of this summer. The engineering firm representing the temple has said the plan was adjusted after community pushback, dropping an earlier proposal to route access traffic through the Villas of Suntree at Linwood Way in favor of routing it through temple property directly onto Waelti Drive instead. Residents gathered again on August 23 for a photo meant to show the county board that opposition hasn't cooled off. One longtime Forest of Suntree resident, who also works locally as a real estate agent, told Viera Voice she worries about what a change of this scale could mean for how buyers see the surrounding streets going forward.

The rezoning application, filed under case number 26Z00023, is still working its way through Brevard County's planning process. Nothing about the outcome is settled yet. What is settled is how quickly and how loudly Suntree residents mobilized the moment they heard about it, which is the part worth paying attention to if you live here.

What Both Stories Say About This Neighborhood

Put the two threads side by side and a pattern shows up that a generic guide to golf courses and gated entrances would never surface. When change respects what a space already meant to the neighborhood, like a brewery honoring the tanks that used to sit in that building or a diner space becoming a new brunch spot instead of something unrecognizable, Suntree absorbs it without friction. When change asks the neighborhood to accept something at a scale nobody signed up for, like fourteen times the permitted density on a landlocked lot, the same neighborhood organizes a petition, a Facebook group, and a public gathering within weeks.

That's not a contradiction. It's the same set of people applying one consistent standard: does this fit the place, or does it just fit the parcel. A restaurant reopening under new ownership passes that test easily. An 82-unit rezoning request is still being asked to prove it.

If you're catching up on Suntree this fall, here's where things stand:

• Bunky's Raw Bar & Brewery is open and serving lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch at 6300 N. Wickham Road, with in-house beer back on tap for the first time since Charlie & Jake's closed.
• Mimosa's has taken over the former Niki's space in Suntree Plaza at 6947 N. Wickham Road for breakfast, lunch, and brunch.
• The Suntree Rotary Club's 21st annual Great Tastes at Suntree runs October 24, with proceeds going to local youth programs.
• The rezoning application for the Waelti Drive parcel, case 26Z00023, remains before Brevard County's planning process, with organized neighborhood opposition still active.

None of this requires you to be shopping for a house here. It's just what's true about Suntree right now, for the people who already call it home.

If you're weighing a move to Suntree, or you already live here and want a clearer read on how a story like the Waelti Drive rezoning might touch home values on your specific street, Dewayne Carpenter and the Carpenter | Kessel team track this corridor block by block. You can also browse the team's Suntree neighborhood guide for a closer look at what's nearby. When you're ready to talk through your own plans, List Your Home with a team that already knows what's happening on your street.