Ask anyone in St. Clair Shores when the Nautical Mile construction ends and you'll get the same answer: not for a while. The Jefferson Relief Sewer Project has been sold as a multi-year undertaking since it broke ground in February 2025, and by early 2026 it was still only about 45 percent finished, four phases into a nine-phase build. That timeline runs into 2027. Most residents have mentally filed the whole corridor under "still under construction, check back next year" and stopped paying close attention.
That's the wrong date to be watching. Back in May, Mayor Kip Walby gave a much more specific answer when a reporter pressed him on when the Nautical Mile stretch itself would be clear.
"This will all be open by Thanksgiving. The Nautical Mile. The project will still not be done. We still have to go from 10 Mile to Bon Brae, but the nautical mile will be done by Thanksgiving."
Two different clocks are running here. The countywide sewer project, which stretches from Nine Mile north past Bon Brae, keeps going into 2027. But the mile-long strip between Nine Mile and 10 Mile Road, the actual restaurant row, the part with the marinas and the patios and the boat docking, is on track to reopen in about eleven weeks. If you've been avoiding the Mile because "it's still torn up," the window to change your mind is smaller than the headlines suggest.
What The Phase Math Actually Says
The project's own numbers back up the mayor's split timeline. Construction started in February 2025 with a plan to add a second 60-inch pipe under Jefferson Avenue, closing a bottleneck that's routed sewer overflows toward Lake St. Clair since extra piping went in everywhere else along the route back in 2001. By April 2025 crews were still in phase one of nine. Ten months later, this past February, the city reported phase four complete and the project sitting at 45 percent overall, on schedule for a February or March 2027 finish for the entire route.
| Milestone | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Project breaks ground | February 2025 | Phase 1 of 9 begins |
| Phase 1 underway | April 2025 | Jefferson reduced to two lanes in work zones |
| Status as of February 2026 | February 2026 | Phase 4 of 9 complete, 45% of total project finished, on schedule |
| Nautical Mile stretch reopens | Thanksgiving 2026 (mayor's estimate, given May 2026) | 9 Mile to 10 Mile clear |
| Full project completion | February–March 2027 | Work continues north to Bon Brae |
The gap between those last two rows is the whole story. The phases still ahead of the crew move the work north, off the strip where the restaurants sit. That's why a mayor who's also stood in front of frustrated business owners for a year and a half felt comfortable naming an actual holiday instead of a fiscal quarter.
The Businesses Counting Down Alongside You
None of this has been easy on the people running storefronts along Jefferson Avenue, and it's worth being honest about that before getting to the good news. Tee Ung, who has owned Nautical Deli for more than 20 years, described a single working entrance that cut his block off from foot traffic when construction first hit that stretch back in 2025. With the sewer project back for another season this year, he's since signed up for DoorDash and Uber Eats to keep volume up, even though he'd rather not pay the commission cut. Down the block, Rani Sheena at Winedock has put a number on it twice now, in two separate rounds of construction: sales down roughly 40 to 50 percent each time. Those aren't projections. Those are an owner describing what already happened to her books.
Virginia Carstarphen, who works with Trader Todd's and volunteers with the Nautical Mile Merchants Association, has framed the stretch's advantage as its density: more than 13 restaurants packed into a single mile, which is exactly what makes it a destination when the sidewalks are clear and exactly what makes barricades hurt more when they aren't. The math behind Thanksgiving isn't abstract for these owners. It's the difference between one more hard season and getting their regular customers back before the holidays.
Somebody Opened A Restaurant Anyway
If the smart money thought the Mile was finished, nobody told Michael LeFevre. His family ran Lido's on the Lake from 1982 to 1990, he later owned a share of Jack's Waterfront Restaurant from 1994 until 2003, and he told a reporter last year he'd been around Jefferson Avenue for something like 56 years altogether. After seven years in Miami, he came back to open Mike's on the Water inside Michigan Harbor, a casual burger and oyster bar with dark stained floors, seating for 150 inside and 24 more on the deck. His read on the timing was simple: "Cars draw cars, people draw people. The more places, the more choices people have to get out and relax by the lake, it makes the entire avenue more hot."
That's not the logic of someone betting on decline. Merchants and marina owners have also been in talks with the city over a public-private partnership, discussed at roughly $6 million, aimed at sprucing up the corridor to pull in more boater tourism from Michigan and neighboring states. A Michigan State University study once put the marina district's annual revenue at $30 million. Whatever the current figure, the appetite to reinvest in the Mile while it's still fenced off tells you something about how the people closest to it read the calendar.
The Calendar Never Actually Stopped
Even mid-construction, the Mile kept its traditions running. Restaurant Week, now an 18-year staple, returned again this spring, coordinated through a merchant association trolley that shuttles people between more than a dozen participating spots, a lineup that in recent years has included Baffin Brewing Co., Pegasus Taverna, Fishbone's, DOX Grillhouse, and Johnny Blacks Lakehouse East. The St. Clair Shores TIFA Board also funded a free Thursday Night Trolley through this past summer, running July 10 through August 28, stopping at restaurants and bars up and down Jefferson so people wouldn't have to fight for the handful of open parking spots.
That trolley season has wrapped, but the fall calendar is already set:
- Equinox: A Day to Night Market, Saturday, October 3, at 28404 Jefferson Ave
- Sandsbash XXVII, Saturday, November 14, at Barrister Gardens Banquet Center
Sandsbash lands the same week the mayor expects the Mile itself to reopen. Whether that's coincidence or the merchants association planning around the mayor's own estimate, showing up for it doubles as a first look at the cleared corridor.
What To Actually Expect If You Go This Month
If you're heading down to the Mile before Thanksgiving, a few things are worth knowing. Jefferson Avenue is still down to two lanes in active work zones, and Bon Brae remains signed as the main ingress and egress point while crews move through. Some businesses, like Nautical Deli, are currently down to a single working entrance, so don't be surprised if parking and access feel tighter than you remember. Zef's Dockside Bar + Kitchen, one of the newer additions to the strip, has kept its upper deck open through the noise, and it's been drawing steady weekday lunch crowds according to recent visitor reports. Wahby Park and the shoreline walk along the Mile remain unaffected by the road work, so a stroll before dinner is still an easy option even with the construction fencing in view.
None of this is the Mile at full strength. It's the Mile roughly eleven weeks out from the date its own mayor named on the record. The businesses that have hung on through a project that was still less than half finished this past winter are the ones betting that showing up now, not waiting for a ribbon cutting, is what actually gets them to the other side.
The Through-Line
The countywide sewer project isn't finishing this year, and nobody involved is pretending otherwise. But the specific stretch of Jefferson Avenue that defines the Nautical Mile experience, the one with the restaurants, the docks, and the walk to Wahby Park, has a mayor on record with a holiday attached to its reopening. That's a closer, harder date than "sometime in 2027," and it's the one that actually determines what a Thursday night here looks like this fall.
If you're weighing what a home along this stretch of Lake St. Clair is worth once the barricades come down, or just want a read on how a neighborhood like this holds up through a multi-year infrastructure project, Paton Realty tracks these corridors closely. Get your free home valuation and get a straight answer grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what the project timeline says on paper.
