Step out the door on Gulf Shore Boulevard North any evening this summer and you are standing in the middle of the most reshaped mile of coastline in the City of Naples. To the south, a $1 billion-plus resort you watched come down four years ago is quietly serving ceviche again. To the north, the playground you remember from before Hurricane Ian is finally getting a replacement contract. And a mile further south, the pier that used to anchor the town's sunset ritual is a construction site. If your evening habit has felt slightly off this year, this is why.
The one-mile stretch that changed while you were away for summer
For a long time the Coquina Sands sunset routine was fixed: walk down to the Naples Beach Hotel lawn, cut through to Sunset Bar, then drift north along the sand to Lowdermilk if the kids or grandkids were in town. Every part of that route has been rewritten in the last twelve months, and the parts aren't moving on the same clock. The south end reopened first and is still adding pieces. The north end is about to enter a construction window. The middle, meaning your beach, is absorbing the traffic that used to end at the Naples Pier.
The pier piece is the one most residents underestimate. The historic 1888 landmark was badly mauled by Hurricane Ian in September 2022, and after years of planning and funding the city finally broke ground on the new pier in January 2026. The roughly $26 million project is being built by Shoreline Foundation, with construction expected to run about 18 months from the start, which points to a reopening somewhere around the middle of 2027. Until then, the town's sunset foot traffic has to go somewhere. A meaningful share of it is going to Lowdermilk and to the Sunset Bar lawn, both of which are inside a ten-minute walk from most Coquina Sands addresses.
What's actually open at the south end tonight
The reopened property carries a new name and an old memory. 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, with a 220-room resort and 153 private residences. Parts of the 125-acre campus, including the Market Square amenities hub, residences, tennis center and the redesigned Tom Fazio 18-hole golf course, are still to come, but the opening brought back HB's and Sunset Bar.
For residents, the two restaurants matter more than the resort. HB's is table-service seafood under Executive Chef Fabio Quarta, who grew up in Lecce, Puglia along the coast of Southern Italy and brings a modern sensibility rooted in fresh seafood and local produce. Sunset Bar is where a walk-up crowd still belongs. It returns as a golden hour gathering spot where a ceremonial blowing of the conch occurs each night, with tropical cocktails and a menu focused on the flavors of Mexico, including ceviche, tostadas, tacos and guacamole. The address to hand a guest is 801 Gulf Shore Boulevard, and unlike HB's it does not take reservations.
One near-term thing to put on the calendar: HB's will be closed throughout August 2026 for updates and reopens in September. If you have out-of-town family arriving for a late-summer birthday, that is the reservation that will not exist. Sunset Bar stays open.
A one-page schedule for the rest of the year
Because the property is opening in waves, it helps to keep the sequence straight:
| Amenity | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Sunset Bar | Open nightly, walk-up |
| HB's | Closed August 2026, reopens September |
| HB's Sunday Beachside Brunch | Returns with HB's in September |
| Sanctuary Spa (30,000 sq ft) | Open |
| The Wager gastropub with four-lane bowling alley | Debuting later in 2026 |
| The Picture House, 22-seat cinema | Debuting later in 2026 |
| Fin's Club and Teen Centre | Debuting in 2026 |
| Tom Fazio 18-hole golf course | Targeted for fall 2026 |
| Lowdermilk playground and gazebo replacement | Council vote June 15, 2026 |
| Naples Pier rebuild | Reopening targeted mid-2027 |
The two lines to circle are the golf course and the playground vote, because they are the pieces that most directly change how residents actually use the neighborhood. The bowling alley and the 22-seat cinema are hotel amenities. The golf course changes what happens on the north side of your block; the playground changes what happens on the beach.
Why Lowdermilk is about to get busier before it gets better
Lowdermilk is the neighborhood park in every practical sense. It is a City of Naples facility at 1301 Gulf Shore Boulevard North, open daily from 5:00 AM to 11:00 PM, and the beach parking still runs on a permit or pay-by-space system that most residents already carry. The gate arms went up earlier this cycle. What is coming next is bigger.
On June 15, 2026, the Naples City Council took up a $699,787 agreement with Playmore West Inc. for the purchase and installation of a new playground and covered gazebo at the park, replacing the previous playground on the north side that was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Funding is 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 project, was postponed after construction bids exceeded the available budget, and the plan updates the city's 2025-26 budget with an additional $250,000 from the Beach Fund.
Two takeaways for anyone who walks Lowdermilk daily. First, this is the north side of the park, meaning the playground closest to the Coquina Sands entries, not the pavilion end. Second, the timeline means construction fencing will overlap with the winter high season, right when the resort south of you is adding The Wager and the golf course. The park will be less usable for kids exactly when the neighborhood is at its busiest, and the substitute is the Sunset Bar lawn and the sand between the two.
The design tell most residents miss
The part of the new resort that will land hardest with people who lived through the old one is not the room count or the price of the umbrellas. It is a wall.
The shellcrete foundation registers first, a distinctly Floridian cue and a vivid reminder of the wave-like coquina sign that announced the beloved hotel that stood here for 75 years. Outside, a frangible shellcrete wall offers a note that is both practical and commemorative, engineered to wash through safely during storms and reminiscent of the wave-like sign that long introduced the Naples Beach Hotel. The porte-cochère overhead is painted in Southern haint blue, and the guest room terraces carry Chippendale-style railings scaled up from the cottages preserved in the Naples Historic District. The architects at Hart Howerton studied Old Naples clapboard and breezeway details and reinterpreted them onto a seven-story building. Whether that reads as reverent or scaled-up is a matter of taste. It is not, however, generic hotel design, and for a Coquina Sands resident who remembers the coquina sign, it is the detail worth walking over to see in person.
Inside, the two dining rooms most people will actually use were shaped by named people worth knowing. Under the direction of Executive Chef Fabio Quarta, Chef de Cuisine Maru Cacho and Beverage Manager Christian Favier, HB's and Sunset Bar balance legacy and innovation. The Sunset Bar cocktail list leans into an extensive tequila and agave program, with the Beach Club Colada, El Centro and Sabrina Sunset as the signature builds. That is a very different bar than the old Sunset Bar, and it is one of the few places in Naples where a resident can walk up on foot and be seated without a reservation and without a car.
A practical residents' routine, summer 2026
For anyone recalibrating their evening walk, here is the shape that seems to work:
- Start north at Lowdermilk before dusk, keeping an eye on which fenced areas open up once the Playmore West work begins.
- Walk south along the sand rather than Gulf Shore Boulevard. The stretch between Lowdermilk and the resort has absorbed the sunset crowd redirected from the closed pier.
- Stop at Sunset Bar for the nightly conch and a walk-up drink. It is first-come, and 4:30 seating is a real thing this season.
- Save HB's for a booked evening in September or later, once it reopens from the August closure.
- Save The Wager and The Picture House for a weekday visit once they debut; those are the pieces most likely to draw local, non-guest traffic.
None of this requires you to be a resort guest. The beach in front of the property is public, the walk from Coquina Sands is short, and the ceremonial parts of the evening, the conch, the sunset, the walk back, still belong to the neighborhood.
If you own a home in Coquina Sands and are weighing what this next twelve months means for your property, or if you are eyeing a home here precisely because of the mile you just read about, Tom and Sue Weidlich live and work this stretch. Book an appointment when you are ready to talk through what it means for your address specifically.
