If you assumed Pelican Bay's two biggest renovations this year would wrap up together in one tidy fall reveal, this is the month that assumption breaks. The Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón, the inland golf resort you have to get in a car to reach, has a hard finish date. Waterside Shops, the retail heart most residents can walk or tram to without ever hitting Tamiami Trail, does not.
That reversal is worth sitting with for a second, because it runs backward from how these things usually go. The place farther from home is the one operating on a published calendar. The place closer to home is the one still waiting on a tenant.
The Golf Resort Has a Date. The Mall Doesn't.
The Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón began its renovation on May 17, 2026, and the work is scheduled to wrap September 27, 2026. That is not a rough season, that is a date on a booking calendar, and it holds because a resort has to know when it can start selling rooms at full rate again. Parker Torres Design, the same studio that reworked the beachfront Ritz-Carlton a few years back, is behind the redesign, and two new restaurants, Palmera and Fenrose, are set to debut alongside a refreshed lobby, guest rooms, and a new 2,700 square foot event space called Swaying Palm. Through the end of September, Ría is still serving lunch in its outdoor space and dinner in a temporary room called The Preserve, Bella Vista Lounge is running out of the Cypress Lounge, and Lemonía's breakfast buffet has been relocated to the Tiburón Ballroom. Every one of those workarounds carries the same expiration language: through September 2026. When that date passes, so does the interim arrangement.
Waterside Shops has no equivalent sentence anywhere in its own materials. The property's transformation is closer to a rolling replacement than a single project with a ribbon cutting. Eddie V's Prime Seafood opened June 7 on the southwest corner, the first Eddie V's location in the region for parent company Darden, with 361 seats spread across a main dining hall, a speakeasy, a stage-equipped bar, and two private dining rooms. Christian Dior has already opened its own standalone boutique, moving out of its former shared space inside Saks Fifth Avenue. Those two are done. The two openings most residents have actually been asking about are not.
What's Actually Finished at Waterside, and What Isn't
| Space | Status as of September 2026 | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Eddie V's Prime Seafood | Open | Opened June 7 at the former US Bank outparcel on Seagate Drive |
| Christian Dior boutique | Open | Relocated from a shared space inside Saks Fifth Avenue |
| Buck & Rider | Not yet | Targeted for late 2026, occupying the former Brio space at 5505 Tamiami Trail N |
| RH Naples (Restoration Hardware) | Not yet | No confirmed date, permits issued August 2025, targeted for late 2026 |
| Brunello Cucinelli | Under construction | Construction documents approved in late July 2025, buildout underway |
The Buck & Rider space used to be Brio Italian Grille, which closed on April 12 after twenty years at Waterside. Brio's exit wasn't a Waterside decision so much as a corporate one. Parent company Bravo Brio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, its second filing in five years, and the lease simply wasn't renewed. Buck & Rider, a seafood concept out of Arizona run by Hi Noon Hospitality under CEO Adam Strecker, is treating Naples as its first expansion outside the Southwest, but "late 2026" is the only timeline on offer, and that phrase has already stretched across two seasons of construction photos.
RH Naples is the bigger unknown. The former Nordstrom building, vacant since 2020 and just under 75,000 square feet, is being rebuilt into six connected galleries with skylights, wrapped around a full-service restaurant and wine bar under a glass atrium. County permits for the site were issued back in August 2025. As of this writing, there is still no confirmed opening date, only the same "late 2026" language that everything else at Waterside carries. The whole redevelopment represents a roughly $100 million capital investment, the largest at the property since the Forbes Company acquired it in the early 2000s, and managing partner Nate Forbes has framed it as a bet on where the regional market is heading rather than a reaction to any single tenant leaving.
If you noticed the traveling lemonade cart parked near the fountains on Friday and Saturday afternoons this summer, that program, called The Squeeze, ran through the end of August and has now wrapped along with the rest of peak season. Its disappearance is as good a marker as any that the walk-up-and-browse rhythm of summer is over, even though the construction fencing along the Nordstrom footprint isn't going anywhere yet.
Why the Order Matters If You Actually Live Here
The practical difference for a resident planning where to take a visiting relative this fall comes down to which calendar you're trusting. Book dinner reservations around the Tiburón reopening and you're working with a published end date, September 27, that a major hotel operator has every financial incentive to hit. Plan an evening around Waterside's newest arrivals and you're betting on a phrase, late 2026, that has already absorbed a full summer of delay without anyone updating it.
That is not a criticism of Waterside so much as an honest read of two different kinds of projects. A resort renovation is one contractor, one owner, one opening weekend that drives revenue the moment it happens. A shopping center rebuild is a dozen separate tenant buildouts running on a dozen separate lease and permitting timelines, and none of those tenants answer to the property's own marketing calendar.
The Concert Season Starts Somewhere You've Probably Already Walked
Artis-Naples announced its full 2026-27 season this summer, themed "To Light: The Art of Hope," and it marks Alexander Shelley's third year as artistic and music director. The centerpiece is Shelley leading the Naples Philharmonic through all nine Beethoven symphonies over the course of the season, alongside guest appearances from Yo-Yo Ma, Audra McDonald, and Itzhak Perlman. New exhibitions land at the Baker Museum this season too. The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams, on loan from the Tate in the United Kingdom, opens in October and runs through February 2027, and a Baron Wolman photography retrospective covering the late 1960s music scene follows, running through June 2027.
What's easy to miss is that the museum's reach already extends past its own walls. The Baker Museum Sculpture Trail has been installed in partnership with the Pelican Bay Foundation, which means residents who walk the community's own paths have likely passed a piece of this season's programming before ever buying a ticket to Hayes Hall.
One Date That Isn't a Guessing Game
Not everything on the fall calendar comes with the uncertainty of a mall buildout. Pelican Bay Community Park hosts the Pelican Bay Junior Grand Prix #9 September 19 through 21, and the details are as fixed as a junior tennis bracket gets:
- Six draws across boys' and girls' singles, played on green clay
- A Level 6 sanctioned tournament
- Entry fee of $79 per event
- Held at Pelican Bay Community Park, the same courts many residents already use
If you're looking for a weekend that runs exactly on the schedule printed, that's it. No permit signs, no "late 2026" language, just a published bracket and a start time.
The Read for the Rest of the Year
The honest way to plan around Pelican Bay this fall is to separate the calendar you can trust from the one you're guessing at. Tiburón's September 27 date and the tennis tournament's September 19 to 21 window are both fixed points you can build plans around now. Waterside's remaining openings are worth checking on again before you commit an evening to them, because "late 2026" has already proven itself flexible once this year.
If you're weighing how any of this touches property values or timing a move in or out of the neighborhood, that's a longer conversation, and it's one Donna Tidwell has been having with Naples buyers and sellers for years across both the beach side and the inland communities. Reach out anytime you want a local read that goes beyond what the portals already tell you.
