Downtown Clermont's October Calendar Is Full While the Blocks Around It Change

On Sunday mornings this month, 8th Street between Minneola and Montrose closes to traffic for the Downtown Clermont Farmers Market, which runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and continues along Montrose Street from Lake to West. One of the booths on 8th Street this season belongs to A Little Hello Co., a shop that had a storefront inside the Downtown Exchange a few weeks ago. Its owner, Dawn Mancuso, told WKMG she can keep selling online while she works out her next step.

That booth sums up downtown Clermont this fall. October has one of the busiest event calendars of the year. Over the same six weeks, the city picked a parking garage site, a shared vendor building on 8th Street cleared out most of its tenants, and a $45 million lakefront redevelopment proposal came up for debate. Most of the month's festivals take place within a short walk of one of those three sites.

The Month, Mapped by Address

Here is the October lineup as it stands in the City of Clermont's 2026 special events schedule, the Clermont Main Street calendar, and South Lake Tablet.

The events fall into two clusters. One is the Montrose and 8th Street grid, home to the market, the Wine Stroll, Suntoberfest and Harvest Fest. The other runs along the Lake Minneola shoreline from Waterfront Park to Victory Pointe, where the triathlon, Italian Fest, Scaremont and the Halloween-night trail run take place. Each cluster now has a pending change next to it.

The city's schedule PDF carries no publication date, and at least one event card on the Main Street calendar still shows 2025 wording in its description. Check hours with the organizer before you head out, especially for Scaremont and Harvest Fest.

8th Street: The Downtown Exchange Resets

The Downtown Exchange at 639 8th St. describes itself as a restored historic building set up as an artisan market for small businesses, with prepared food and drink sold alongside retail goods. In August, nine of its businesses received termination notices with a Sept. 30 move-out date. WKMG named On the Go Pickleball, Sappore di Napoli and A Little Hello Co. among them. A Hoodline follow-up listed Sparkle Creations, Yodi Brodi, The Healthy Nut Café, Pat's Soft Serve and Divilma as well.

The two sides describe the notice period differently. The landlord's statement says each lease had a termination-for-convenience clause requiring 30 days' notice and that every tenant received 45. A Little Hello Co.'s Aug. 20 post describes it as about 30 days. The landlord also said he would help with relocations and return deposits promptly.

Mancuso's comments to WKMG explain why some of these shops may not reopen nearby:

"We're priced out of the market down here at this point because it's becoming so popular."

She put downtown rents at $3,000 to $5,000, with first month, last month and a security deposit often due up front. As of early October, most of the businesses have not announced where they are going. On the Go Pickleball Shop's website says it is relocating and that a new location is coming soon. If you have a favorite vendor from the Exchange, the Sunday market and the shops' own websites are your best leads for now.

The space is getting a new tenant. Divino Market, LLC has leased space at the Exchange and expects to open later this year. The company says the business is a new concept and "not an expansion of any existing restaurant," and it has not yet shared details. The landlord says plans for the property will be announced once they are finalized.

A block away, there is a recent opening. Fumao Table, a Cuban restaurant and café at 646 7th St., Suite 103, opened June 28, according to the Daily Commercial. It is easy to add to a Wine Stroll evening or a Suntoberfest afternoon.

7th and Minneola: Where the Garage Is Not Going

Parking around Montrose on event nights was a regular complaint long before this fall. In August, City Council set up a citizens advisory committee and gave it 60 days to compare garage sites. The options included the city lot at Seventh Street and Minneola Avenue and the parking areas behind City Hall.

The committee met Sept. 10 to review three design concepts from CPH for each site. Minutes show members chose the City Hall site, focused on parking, with a mixed-use element on 7th Street. For the Seventh and Minneola option, they said it would need more parking than proposed, a covered outdoor element on Minneola, and commercial space on the corner. City Council approved the City Hall location 5–0 on Sept. 22. On Sept. 25, WKMG reported that preliminary engineering was about to begin.

For this October, parking works the same way it did last year. The garage is still at the engineering stage, and the Seventh and Minneola lot is still a surface lot. The one official lot guidance comes from Clermont Main Street's farmers market page, which points visitors to the free City Center and Minneola Avenue parking lots. For Suntoberfest and Harvest Fest, council's event approvals include road closures and temporary no-parking signs downtown. Expect a few curbside spaces you normally use to be blocked off on festival weekends. No street-by-street closure map had been published for either festival as of early October.

Victory Pointe: The Lakefront Block Under Review

The Oct. 31 Nightmare on the Clermont Trails race starts at Victory Pointe. The 12.3 acres next door are the site of the proposed Lumberyard District, a $45 million mixed-use project bordering Victory Pointe Park, the South Lake Trail and the Lake County Rowing Association.

South Lake Tablet's August report laid out the proposal in phases:

1. Phase One: 262 apartments in four buildings, about 70 percent of them one-bedroom units, plus a clubhouse, a resort-style pool and a rooftop bar overlooking Lake Minneola.
2. Phase Two: another 130 apartments, live-work spaces and a two-story parking garage for residents and visitors.
3. The Sawmill: a commercial district of roughly 53,000 to 55,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, office and entertainment space.

Together that comes to 392 apartments. For a sense of scale, the West End project approved at 821 W. Minneola Ave. covers 16 residential units on about 0.635 acres, with ground-floor retail and restaurant space capped at 6,000 square feet across four buildings. The Sawmill's commercial space alone would be roughly nine times West End's cap.

The Lumberyard is still a proposal, with construction planned in two phases. South Lake Tablet notes that residents will have chances to weigh in as the project moves forward. The same report lists Minneola Avenue, Montrose Street and Seventh Street as the roads where traffic from new downtown units and commercial space would be watched most closely. Those are the same streets that host the Wine Stroll, Suntoberfest and Harvest Fest.

A Practical Read on the Next Four Weekends

The first weekend is the busiest. Family Food Fest and Celebrate Autumn at Clermont Historic Village overlap on the evening of Oct. 3, and the farmers market fills 8th Street the next morning. The Oct. 17–18 weekend splits between the two clusters: the Wine Stroll on Montrose Saturday night and the Great Floridian Triathlon at Waterfront Park on Sunday. On Oct. 31, Harvest Fest downtown and the Victory Pointe trail race happen on the same day, at opposite ends of the same walkable stretch.

If you are walking between the clusters, the route from the Montrose grid to the lakefront passes the City Hall garage site and ends next to the Lumberyard parcel. When the garage is built and the Lumberyard proposal gets its next public hearing, the people walking that route this month will already know the ground being discussed.

If you own a home near downtown Clermont and want to know how the City Hall garage decision, the Lumberyard proposal and the turnover on 8th Street could affect your property, Team G.R.E.A.T. can walk you through what's happening on your blocks. Get a Home Valuation and see how your home compares in the current market.