For four years, the north end of Gulf Shore Boulevard was a place you drove around. Construction fencing, closed lanes, a boarded-up hotel where a landmark used to be, a playground that vanished with Hurricane Ian and never came back.
That period is over. What replaced it isn't a return to 2019. It's a different street, a different beach park, a different Friday night rotation, and the fall of 2026 is when the new version stops feeling temporary.
The boulevard is not the same street it was in 2022
Gulf Shore Boulevard North fully reopened after the City finished its water line work and the north outfall pump station at 8th Avenue North. The rebuild wasn't cosmetic. New enhancements include landscaped medians, upgraded sidewalks with pavers, safer crosswalks with a new pedestrian warning light system, new bike lanes on both sides of the boulevard, and lush landscaping featuring shade trees on Gulf Shore Boulevard North and Oleander Drive.
Bike lanes on both sides matters. If your morning routine used to end at the Lowdermilk parking lot because riding past it felt like a game of chicken, that constraint is gone. The corridor between Banyan Boulevard and the resort now reads as a single connected pedestrian and cyclist route rather than three disconnected segments stitched by shoulder gravel.
HB's is back. So is Sunset Bar. The math around them isn't the same.
Nearly seven years after the city approved the plan and four years after the original 1946 Naples Beach Hotel came down, the new Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, officially opened to the public on November 17, 2025. For anyone walking or biking down from Coquina Sands, the practical question isn't whether to visit. It's how to slot five new rooms into a rotation that already had opinions.
Here is what is actually on the site right now versus what is still ahead:
| Now open | Rolling out through 2026 | Later |
|---|---|---|
| HB's on the Gulf | The Sanctuary spa (30,000 sq ft) | The Gardens, Tom Fazio 18-hole course |
| Sunset Bar | The Wager gastropub | Additional beach-side residence phases |
| The Merchant Room | Market Square amenities | Full residential build-out |
| Lobby bar, pools, tennis | Fin's Club, Picture House cinema |
The flagship restaurant, The Merchant Room, is led by two-time James Beard Award-winning chef Gavin Kaysen from Minneapolis, with a menu that promises a French spin on Gulf flavors. That is a different bet than HB's, which is running as one of the few places for true beachfront dining in Naples, extending onto a deck steps from the sand. Two restaurants, roughly two hundred feet apart, are aimed at completely different occasions. Treating them as interchangeable because they share a parking lot is a mistake residents make in the first month and correct by the second.
Sunset Bar deserves its own note. The revived Sunset Bar is now reimagined with neon accents, Latin-leaning small plates, and tropical cocktails, keeping its easy, open-air spirit while infusing a lighter, more playful energy. If your mental model of Sunset Bar is a laid-back beach shack with a cover band, recalibrate before you go.
One line worth reading twice, from the Gulf Shore Association of Condominiums: "The Gardens, the new Tom Fazio 18-hole golf course, will open in the fall of 2026 as its completion is limited by our construction access road that ensures there is no construction traffic in Coquina Sands from our development." The Four Seasons' own site currently lists the course as coming in 2027. Read those two together and the honest answer is: sometime between this fall and next. If you were planning your tee time by that date, plan for a range instead.
Lowdermilk is still under construction, and that is a feature this quarter
The playground that Hurricane Ian took in 2022 is coming back, but not immediately. The Naples City Council is set to vote on a $699,787 agreement with Playmore West Inc. for the purchase and installation of a new playground and covered gazebo at Lowdermilk Park, replacing the previous playground on the north side that was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Funding for the expansion would come from a combination of two previously approved park enhancement projects and a $250,000 donation from the Nommensen family. The gazebo, originally planned as part of a 2025 park improvement project, was postponed after construction bids exceeded the available budget.
Two things follow from that. First, the north end of the park will be an active work site through the installation window, so if you have grandchildren visiting this fall, the south pavilion and the volleyball courts are the honest recommendation. Second, if you have been avoiding Lowdermilk since 2022 because the amenity mix felt thinned out, the story will be different by next season. Getting comfortable with the park again while it is still under construction is easier than showing up cold in February.
The basics still work: the park is City of Naples property that needs a parking permit, quarters, or a credit card for parking, and beach parking is available for a fee, typically around $2.50 per hour, or visitors can obtain a beach parking permit from the City of Naples, with ADA-compliant beach access mats provided. City residents can pick up beach permits at City Hall, which is the single most underused fact among people who live inside the permit zone.
One related piece of context, since it affects the whole coast: the historic 1888 landmark Naples Pier was badly mauled by Hurricane Ian in September 2022, and the City of Naples held a groundbreaking for the rebuild in early January 2026. The roughly $26 million project is being built by Shoreline Foundation, with much of the funding coming from FEMA, state grants, and public donations, and construction is expected to run about 18 months, pointing to a reopening somewhere around the middle of 2027. Until then, Lowdermilk is the closest full-amenity beach day within walking or bike range.
The fall arts calendar at Artis—Naples is the strongest in years
Down Pelican Bay Boulevard, Artis—Naples has announced its 2026-2027 season, themed "To Light: The Art of Hope," bringing together wide-ranging, multidisciplinary programs that explore resilience, renewal, and the many ways artists respond to darkness with imagination and possibility. Highlights include Artistic and Music Director Alexander Shelley leading the Naples Philharmonic through all nine of Beethoven's symphonies in conjunction with the season-long commemoration of the composer 200 years after his death, plus major exhibitions in The Baker Museum and performances by Yo-Yo Ma, Audra McDonald, Itzhak Perlman, Sutton Foster and Kelli O'Hara.
The dates worth locking in now:
- Florida Contemporary 2026-27 at The Baker Museum, the 14th edition featuring Dustin Harewood, Nicario Jiménez-Quispe, Savannah Magnolia and Anastasia Samoylova, opening Oct. 17 and running through June 27, 2027
- Hamilton, Broadway Series, November 24–25 and 27–29, 2026
- Baron Wolman: Capturing the Sound of an Era, celebrating the legacy of Rolling Stone's first chief photographer, opening December 5 and running through June 13, 2027
- Death Becomes Her, Broadway Series, December 29, 2026 through January 3, 2027
If you subscribe, subscribe now. The Broadway titles this year are unusually strong, and single-ticket inventory for Hamilton in a market this size will not last.
What to do with the next eight weeks
The window between Labor Day and the first snowbird weekend is the useful one. A few concrete moves:
- Ride the boulevard end to end once, in both directions, before the winter traffic loads back onto Gulf Shore. The point is to internalize the new crosswalk locations and the bike lane transitions before you need them in the dark.
- Book one dinner at The Merchant Room and one lunch at HB's inside the same two-week window. The comparison only lands if the meals are close in time.
- Walk Lowdermilk on a weekday morning to check the construction fencing lines. If the playground is your reason to go, the honest answer for October and November is Cambier Park downtown instead.
- Buy or renew your City of Naples beach parking permit at City Hall now, not on a Saturday in January.
- Pick one Baker Museum exhibition and one Broadway title from the list above and put both on the calendar this month.
The theme running through all of this is that Coquina Sands hasn't changed. What has changed is the ring of infrastructure and programming around it, and that ring is now dense enough that the way a resident spends a Saturday in November 2026 does not resemble a Saturday in November 2022. The neighborhood is quiet by design. The block just north of it is anything but.
If you are weighing what any of this means for a home you already own here, or thinking about a second residence within walking distance of the new corridor, Text Me Realty is the right first call. Text Me Today — (239) 686-TEXT.
