For the better part of four years, the beach walk out of Coquina Sands had a predictable shape. Head north toward Doctors Pass and you hit a construction fence, cranes, and the slow, dusty churn of a project that seemed permanent. Head south toward Lowdermilk Park and you got the same reliable stretch of sand, playground, and snack bar it had been since the storm cleanup years ago. One end changing, one end frozen. That was the walk.
It isn't anymore. The end that spent years behind plywood is now the one with a wine list and a Sunday reservation. The end that never moved is the one about to get a construction fence of its own.
The North End Finished Building
Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort opened to the public on November 17, 2025, closing out a redevelopment of the old Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club site that had reshaped that stretch of Gulf Shore Boulevard North for years. The opening restored public access to more than 1,000 feet of Gulf shoreline, and it brought back two names longtime residents actually recognize: HB's, the beachfront restaurant, and Sunset Bar, the open-air spot that's hosted a lot of Coquina Sands sunsets over the decades. Both were rebuilt inside the new resort rather than replaced by something unfamiliar.
The flagship addition is new. The Merchant Room, the resort's fine-dining room, is led by chef Gavin Kaysen, a two-time James Beard Award winner, and in June 2026 it picked up a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. That's a fast turnaround for a restaurant that opened less than a year earlier, and it's the kind of detail that tells you the kitchen isn't coasting on the address.
Here's the part that matters for anyone who lives four minutes away and has been putting off a visit assuming it's still a hotel project in progress: you do not need to be a guest to eat there. The Merchant Room, HB's, and Sunset Bar are all open to the public. Sunset Bar runs walk-in only, so there's no reservation to plan around, just a good hour to arrive before the light does its thing. HB's and The Merchant Room take reservations and get tight during the January through April stretch, worth booking two to three weeks out if you're set on a specific evening. Dress leans smart casual at HB's, business casual at The Merchant Room (collared shirt territory), and beach casual at Sunset Bar, where a cover-up over a swimsuit is perfectly fine. Valet runs fifteen dollars with a dining receipt to validate it.
The resort added a weekly ritual this spring: HB's launched a Sunday Beachside Brunch on April 26, 2026, running 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with last seating at 2:30, priced at $110 per person and built around a glass of Champagne, a crudo platter, an entree, and a steady rotation of passed small bites. If you've lived on this stretch of beach long enough to remember when Sunday mornings here meant nothing more than an empty beach and a walk to the pier, this is a genuinely new option, not a repackaged old one.
Two more pieces are still landing. A fifth dining venue, The Wager, a sports-focused gastropub with a bowling alley attached, was slated for a third-quarter 2026 opening, a window that closes out this month. And the resort's Tom Fazio-designed golf course, called The Gardens, has been targeting a fall 2026 debut, which puts it on the calendar right about now. Neither is confirmed open as of this writing, but both are close enough that a resident walking that stretch this month should expect to see the last of the construction fencing come down rather than go up.
The South End Is About to Start
Lowdermilk Park has been the walk's constant. Same playground, same snack bar, same duck pond, since the city rebuilt what Hurricane Ian took out back in 2022. That's about to change too, just in the opposite direction from the north end.
This past June, the Naples City Council took up a $699,787 agreement with Playmore West Inc. to design and install a new playground and a covered gazebo on the park's north side, replacing the equipment lost to Ian. The funding stitches together two previously approved park enhancement projects with a $250,000 donation from the Nommensen family, a detail that says something about how this park gets maintained: not purely through city budget cycles, but with help from people who clearly use it. The gazebo itself had originally been planned as part of a 2025 improvement project before construction bids came in over budget and pushed it back a year.
None of that is finished yet. What it means practically is that the reliable half of your walk, the one you've never had to think twice about, is now the half heading into an active construction period. If you've been treating Lowdermilk as the default plan precisely because it never changes, that assumption has an expiration date on it now.
Why the Order Matters
Here's the actual shift, and it's easy to miss if you only check in on this stretch of beach occasionally. For years, the smart move was obvious: skip the fenced-off north end, default to the finished south end. That logic is now backwards. The north end is done, open, and running a full calendar, brunch reservations, a wine award, a golf course on the verge of opening. The south end, the one you never had to plan around, is the one about to have equipment on the sand.
If your mental map of this walk still has "construction" pinned to Doctors Pass, you're describing a version of the neighborhood that hasn't existed since last November. And if you've been defaulting to Lowdermilk because it's always been the safe, unchanging half of the trip, that's worth rechecking before you plan your next beach morning around it.
What the Walk Actually Looks Like Right Now
For anyone heading out this week, here's the practical rundown:
- North toward Doctors Pass: HB's and Sunset Bar are open and public, no resort stay required. Sunset Bar is walk-in only. HB's and The Merchant Room take reservations, and dinner books up during peak season. Valet is $15 with a dining receipt.
- Sunday mornings: HB's Beachside Brunch runs 11 to 3, $110 per person, reservations required.
- South toward Lowdermilk: Still fully open, still the same beach, snack bar, and duck pond you know, but budget for the playground and gazebo work to start showing up in the months ahead.
- Either direction: Beach parking still requires a permit or pay-by-space, same as it always has.
The walk itself hasn't gotten longer or shorter. What's changed is which end rewards showing up and which end is worth checking on before you assume nothing's different.
The Neighborhood Keeps Rewriting Itself
Coquina Sands has always been a place where the beach access mattered as much as the address, and that access just got more interesting on one end and more temporary on the other. Neither change is dramatic on its own. Together, they're a reminder that even a stretch of coastline you've walked hundreds of times doesn't stay the same shape for long.
If you're curious what else has shifted around Coquina Sands lately, or you're weighing what a home on this stretch of Naples actually offers day to day, The Whitcomb Group knows this beach the way residents do, one walk at a time. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's changed and what hasn't.
