For roughly four years, the walk south from Banyan Boulevard ended at a construction fence. The old Naples Beach Hotel came down in 2022, and with it went the neighborhood's most reliable habit: a short stroll to a table on the sand. The fence is down. The routine is back, and it looks different than it did before.
The Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, opened to guests on November 16, 2025, and by the spring of 2026 the amenities that matter most to a Coquina Sands resident were operating on the original footprint of the property that anchored this shoreline for 75 years. What follows is less a review of a new resort than a practical read on how the summer works when the block at the end of your street is finally open again.
The doorstep, restored
The two names longtime residents watched for are back where they belong. HB's, named for Watkins family patriarch Henry B. Watkins Sr., has reopened on its original beachfront footprint with expanded deck dining and oversized engineered umbrellas, each valued at roughly $100,000, that keep the terrace usable in July. Sunset Bar has returned as the golden-hour gathering spot, now with tropical cocktails and Latin-leaning small plates rather than the old menu.
Three points matter for anyone living within walking distance:
- HB's, The Merchant Room, and Sunset Bar are open to the public. You do not need to be a hotel guest to book a table, and valet parking runs $15 with restaurant validation.
- The 1,000-foot beach in front of the property remains publicly accessible, and the reopening restored that access after years of closure.
- Reservations at The Merchant Room are required, and during peak season HB's dinner tables have been booking two to three weeks out.
The Merchant Room is the property's culinary calling card, developed with Gavin Kaysen, a two-time James Beard Award winner and his first restaurant outside Minneapolis. Executive Chef Fabio Quarta runs the day-to-day kitchen alongside Chef de Cuisine Colin Henderson. For residents, the practical read is that the Sunday Supper three-course menu (5:00 to 9:00 pm) and HB's Sunday Beachside Brunch (11:00 am to 3:00 pm) are among the easier walk-in windows, particularly in the summer months when winter residents have gone north.
A summer morning that no longer requires the car
Before the redevelopment, a Coquina Sands morning routine typically meant a short drive somewhere. This summer, the sequence tightens considerably.
Naples Trading Company, the property's grab-and-go market off Market Square, opens the day with fresh coffee, house-made pastries, artisan sandwiches, and the essentials of a beach picnic. That last piece is the quiet upgrade: assembling a picnic on foot, rather than staging one at home, is now a five-minute errand for anyone north of Fleischmann Boulevard.
From there, the neighborhood's older ritual continues unchanged. Lowdermilk Park at 1301 Gulf Shore Boulevard N is open daily from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm, the only public beachfront park in the City of Naples and the anchor around which most of the neighborhood's outdoor life is organized. The concession stand, operated as Flip Flop Beach Grill, runs 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with paddleboard and kayak rentals on the sand and beach-wheelchair rentals for accessibility.
A few standing rules worth keeping in mind for summer visitors and grandchildren:
- Alcohol and glass are prohibited on the beach and turf.
- Amplified music, tents larger than 10x10, or attendance of 1,500 or more require a Special Event Permit from the City.
- All vehicles must exit the park by 11:00 pm to avoid a violation on the newly activated automatic gate.
Sunrise swims, volleyball, and the duck pond loop on the way to the sand remain the parts of the day that were never in question. What changed is the bookends. Coffee before, and lunch after, no longer require a drive.
Golden hour is public again
The most consequential shift in the neighborhood's summer calendar is not the arrival of a fine-dining brasserie. It is the return of a communal sunset. The property calls it Naples' social hour, and it begins each evening with the ceremonial blowing of a conch shell at Sunset Bar. Live music runs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 6:00 pm through the summer, and the bar is walk-in only.
For a household that already lives on Gulf Shore Boulevard, that changes the arithmetic of a weekend evening. A Friday sunset now involves a walk rather than a valet ticket somewhere else in town, and the shoreline in front of the old Naples Beach Hotel is once again the neighborhood's meeting point.
What the redevelopment quietly gave the neighborhood
The louder story about the $1 billion-plus redevelopment has been the residences, the Fazio course, and the Champalimaud interiors. The quieter story is what got protected.
More than 104 acres of the 125-acre campus were placed into a permanent conservation easement, which locks in green space on a stretch of Southwest Florida coast where developable land has otherwise moved in the opposite direction. The Mary C. Watkins Tennis Center remains public-facing. HB's and Sunset Bar sit on their historical footprints. The frangible shellcrete wall along the property line was engineered to wash through safely during storms, a design detail that also echoes the wave-like coquina sign that stood for decades at the old hotel entrance.
For a resident weighing what the reopening means beyond the menus, the answer is that the shoreline directly in front of one of the neighborhood's original public gathering spots has been rebuilt with continued public access and a landscape buffer that will outlast any single operator. That is not a small thing on a coast where 500 feet of beachfront trades in nine figures.
What is still to come this year
The property opened in phases, and several pieces of the campus that residents will end up using regularly are still ahead:
| Amenity | Status |
|---|---|
| The Sanctuary Spa (30,000 sq ft, two levels, rooftop lap pool) | Opened March 2026 |
| The Merchant Room, HB's, Sunset Bar, Naples Trading Company | Open |
| Fin's Club and Teen Centre | Opened Q1 2026 |
| The Wager sports gastropub with four-lane bowling | Opening Q3 2026 |
| Redesigned Tom Fazio 18-hole golf course | Scheduled for Fall 2026 |
The Sanctuary Spa is the amenity most likely to reshape a weekday habit. Its aquatherapy circuit, Finnish saunas, and 16 treatment rooms are open to non-guests, and its rooftop two-lane lap pool gives residents an option that did not previously exist within a five-minute walk. The fitness center was developed with trainer Harley Pasternak and runs 24 hours.
The Wager, arriving later this year, is worth calendaring for households with visiting grandchildren. A four-lane bowling alley, a game lounge, and The Picture House cinema inside Market Square give the property a rainy-afternoon layer that Coquina Sands has historically lacked.
The Coquina Sands summer, in one sentence
The neighborhood's daily radius has quietly contracted to what it used to be before 2022. Coffee, beach, lunch, spa, sunset, and live music are once again available inside a walk that most residents can complete in flat sandals. Whether that makes Coquina Sands feel more like a resort district or more like the pre-redevelopment version of itself is a matter of taste. Either way, the fence is down, the shoreline is public, and the calendar is fuller than it has been in four summers.
If you own on Gulf Shore Boulevard, Banyan, Crayton, or Murex and are weighing what the reopening means for your position, the team at Bates | Ives tracks how amenity cycles like this one settle into value on a street-by-street basis. Request a private consultation for a discreet read on your home in the context of the redeveloped Beach Club and the neighborhood it now anchors.
