Fairport's Coming-Soon Signs: Who's Opening on the Canal and Main Street, and When
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
On a brick patio at 10 Liftbridge Lane West, a white yard sign with a red logo and a QR code stands next to a red picnic table. It reads "Smashing soon." Here & Main photographed it on October 3, 2026. The sign belongs to Lefty's, and it has been promising a burger restaurant on the canal since late spring.
Fairport has several of these signs up right now. Taken one at a time, each looks like a small piece of village news. Taken together, they point the same way. Most of the new food projects in Fairport and Bushnell's Basin are planned around the water. One wants a patio, one a rooftop bar, one new docks. Each sits at a different stage of the permits and licenses that come before opening day, and that stage tells you more than any window sign.
Lefty's is the smallest project on the list. Owner Steven Lara described it to WROC in May as "a California surf shack," an 800-square-foot restaurant where "our big game is going to be the outdoors. We're canal-front." Lara grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the Rochester area about 15 years ago. He runs Angelina's in the South Wedge and has cooked for F.L.X. Table in Geneva. Lefty's started as a series of pop-ups, and this is its first brick-and-mortar location.
"We're from the 'left' coast, which kind of brought the whole name about."
That is Lara on the name. The plan he laid out includes Cali-style burgers, vegetarian and gluten-free-friendly options, ice cream, and games set up along the waterfront. He told WROC he had been watching the property off Main Street for almost a decade before he got the call.
The schedule in that May story called for an August opening. August has passed and it is now mid-October. The best evidence of progress is a New York State Liquor Authority food and beverage license application, received July 31, 2026. When a restaurant is designed around outdoor tables, a fall opening means its first stretch of business falls outside patio season.
The SLA application date is the most useful public signal for the two Main Street projects as well. Here is the evidence for each new or coming spot, ordered from most to least documented:
Little is public about Mule House yet. No owner or concept has been named. What is on record is the address, the fall promise in the window, and a license application filed about three and a half weeks after Lefty's filed its own. If the two follow similar timelines, Mule House is a bit behind Lefty's, and it's reasonable to expect both are aiming to open before winter.
Blackbird is the most ambitious plan in the village and the earliest in the approval process. WROC reported in July that a Rochester restaurant owner plans a contemporary American restaurant with a rooftop bar overlooking the water. It would go in the former BME Associates engineering building, at the east end of the Box Factory parking lot under the smokestack. The building dates to the early 1900s. A village representative said the second floor would become six apartments. Casa Associates provided the renderings.
The September 9 update cited the business's Facebook page, which said the owners "officially plan to open Blackbird in December." The same article still described the building permit as "currently pending" and the proposals as "currently under review" by the village planning board. We couldn't find a public record of a final planning board decision. December is the owners' goal, and the approvals behind it were still open at last report.
For comparison, the Box Factory already has Clementine Coffee, which serves espresso and Mexican home cooking Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. A rooftop bar at the far end of the same lot would add evening hours facing the canal, a stretch where Mulconry's seasonal patio on Liftbridge Lane East and Moonlight Creamery on West Avenue, which looks out at the lift bridge, already operate.
SWEET. Collective is the one project here that doesn't rely on the canal. Its website points instead to "an outdoor patio overlooking Main Street." The concept comes from the Bintz family. The shop plans hot, made-to-order donuts that are topped and themed daily, bulk candy sold by the scoop, and a small eat-in area. Upstairs, a space will host parties, meetings and classes, and the family also plans off-site candy and donut catering. Gluten-free and dairy-free donuts are on the menu, along with dye-free, low-sugar and allergen-friendly candy.
No opening date has been announced. The site invites visitors to sign up for notice "the moment we open our doors." Along with Mule House at 15½ North Main, it adds to the stretch of North Main already home to Allende, Preservation Beer Company, Dougie's Tavern and Junction361.
The project farthest from opening also has the most ambitious waterfront plans. Richardson's Canal House in Bushnell's Basin served its last meal on September 27, 2025. The building dates to around 1818. It served as a public house for Erie Canal workers and as a stagecoach stop.
Developers Dennis Wilmot and Jim Barbato bought the property this past January, according to an August 24, 2026 report in the Rochester Business Journal. They plan to reopen it as a restaurant by late spring or early summer 2027. Barbato told the paper that a structural engineer is looking at the roof, which he said "isn't very straight on top." The interior needs flooring, paint and other cosmetic work. Because the building is more than 200 years old, some changes require approvals.
The canal is a central part of the plan here too. The owners are working with the New York State Canal Corp. to see whether they can remove the foundation of a former trolley bridge. The trolley ran from downtown Rochester to Geneva between 1903 and 1935. Removing the foundation would make room for docks and "kind of cool water features to really bring the canal component to life," Barbato said. The two developers also bought the adjacent Binder's Building and Cottage, which hold office space, and the Oliver Loud House, a short-term rental that also has an apartment.
The 2027 target puts the reopening at the start of a canal season, the same timing Lefty's aimed for and missed this year.
One recent arrival is going away. The Starbucks on South Main Street, which opened in July 2025 in a newly built building, is among roughly 250 locations the company is closing nationwide. WROC reported on September 25 that a closure notice was posted on the door. On October 5, WHEC still described the café as "set to close." We found no confirmed last day and no announced replacement tenant. WROC said it had asked the Fairport Perinton Chamber what might come next and was waiting to hear back.
The canal edge is getting public investment as well. A Fairport-Perinton Art Trail request for qualifications, released October 1, 2026, calls for a permanent artwork on the north side of the canal in Perinton Park. It is part of a roughly mile-long cultural corridor connecting the Village and Town business districts. The artwork budget is $30,000, with fabrication scheduled for January through May and installation due to be finished by May 21, 2027.
That installation date lands in the same late-spring window Richardson's Canal House is targeting. If both schedules hold, by next summer the canal path should have a new permanent artwork in Perinton Park and a working restaurant again at the Bushnell's Basin landmark. Lefty's, Mule House, Blackbird and SWEET. Collective should all have had time to open by then, too.
Watching which canal-side spots open, and when, is part of understanding why a walkable location near the lift bridge matters to people in Fairport. If you're thinking about a home in Perinton and want to talk through what changes like these could mean for a particular street, I'm happy to go over it with you. Stacie Whitbeck | Let's Connect.
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