The tram loop that runs Pelican Bay's berms deposits members at the beach in one direction and at the Commons in the other, but the walk most residents are quietly recalculating this July heads southeast. Waterside Shops sits at the corner of the community, close enough that a Coronado owner can be at the valet stand in the time it takes a Ritz-Carlton guest to find their car. That short trip is about to matter more than it has in twenty years.
The center is in the middle of a repositioning, not a refresh, and by year-end the three restaurants a Pelican Bay resident can walk to will be entirely different than the three that were there in January.
The Three Arrivals, In Order
The June and late-fall calendars at 5415 Tamiami Trail N. are doing the heavy lifting. Here is what has already landed and what is still coming.
| Concept | Space | Timing | Operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eddie V's Prime Seafood | Outparcel, 765 Seagate Drive | Opened June 7, 2026 | Darden |
| Buck & Rider | Former Brio Tuscan Grille | Targeting November / late 2026 | Hi Noon Hospitality |
| RH Naples + Restaurant | Former Nordstrom footprint | Late 2026 | Restoration Hardware |
Eddie V's is the one already taking reservations. Waterside Shops lists hours as Sunday through Thursday from 4 PM to 9 PM and Friday through Saturday from 4 PM to 10 PM. The dining room leans into a wine program recognized by Wine Spectator, with more than 300 wines, and the V Lounge runs live music trios in the evenings. For anyone on the north end of Pelican Bay, this is the first fine-dining seafood room since the Nordstrom era that does not require a drive to Mercato or downtown.
Buck & Rider is more interesting for what its arrival signals. The restaurant is set to replace Brio Tuscan Grille at Waterside Shops, with an opening target in November 2026, and the Naples location will be the brand's first outside the Southwest. The launch is a homecoming of sorts for the brand's founder, Adam Strecker, who lived for nearly a year in Naples when he helped launch BrickTop's at Waterside Shops in 2006.
RH Naples is the largest bet on the property. The former Nordstrom building, 74,591 square feet and vacant since 2020, is now the construction site for RH Naples. Six separate galleries with skylights will connect through landscaped courtyards and glass-roofed walkways, surrounding a central 4,143-square-foot, full-service restaurant and wine bar beneath an elongated glass atrium. Total footprint is 29,382 square feet, and county construction permits were issued in August 2025. Local contracting firm DeAngelis Diamond is executing the structural build.
Why Forbes Rebuilt Instead Of Refreshed
Reading these three arrivals as separate openings misses the point. They are part of the same decision.
Nordstrom closed its Naples location in 2020 as part of a 16-store national shutdown. Barnes & Noble pulled out in July 2024, retreating from mall formats during a corporate restructuring. Brio Tuscan Grille, which occupied the same Waterside address for nearly twenty years, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025, its second in five years. Three anchor departures inside four years would kneecap a middle-market center. Waterside used the vacancies to change what it is.
The roughly $100 million total investment, as reported by Gulf Shore Business following the September 2025 construction announcement, represents the most significant capital deployment at Waterside since Forbes Company acquired the property in the early 2000s. Managing partner Nate Forbes has framed the choices around the regional market's trajectory rather than any single tenant loss. The through-line is legible in the replacements: Eddie V's, Buck & Rider, and the RH restaurant, three concepts with no overlap in price point, format, or menu identity. Eddie V's occupies the fine-dining tier, a brand known for live jazz and a serious wine program that draws a customer who has historically made the drive to Fort Lauderdale or Tampa to find it.
The formats a Pelican Bay resident used to drive an hour for are being placed inside walking distance. That is the change worth planning around.
The Summer Window Before Fall Reservations Tighten
If you live inside Pelican Bay, the interesting question is not whether these openings are good news. It is what to do with the next eight weeks.
Eddie V's has been open since early June, which means the room is still learning its own service pace and the reservation grid has slack in it that will disappear by the first cool-down week in October. The Buck & Rider and RH restaurant openings are stacked into the last quarter of the year, right on top of the season's returning residents. For anyone whose calendar fills up in November, the practical moves this July and August are narrow and worth doing on purpose:
- Book Eddie V's for a shoulder-season Tuesday or Wednesday before the fall calendar closes in. The first month of a new fine-dining room is when the kitchen is most willing to hear feedback and the sommelier has the most time at the table.
- Walk the Nordstrom construction perimeter once before the reveal. Understanding the six-gallery layout on paper is one thing, watching the atrium framing go up is another, and it is the last summer you will be able to see the bones.
- Reserve holiday visitors' dinners now for whichever of the three concepts is confirmed open in their travel window. The first month of Eddie V's operations will be the tightest reservation window on the outparcel in years.
- Save Brio's replacement date on the calendar so you are not competing with a soft-launch crowd in early November.
How It Fits With Marker 36 And Sandbar
None of this dislodges the two rooms that define Pelican Bay dining for members. The Foundation's two coastal kitchens, Marker 36 on the North End and Sandbar on the South End, sit on the Gulf, providing open-air and indoor seating with beach and sunset views. They remain the default weekday call, the sunset drink, the low-friction lunch after a beach walk.
What changes is the shape of the weekly rotation. A resident whose calendar used to alternate between Marker 36 and Sandbar for the on-property nights and Fifth Avenue for anniversary or business dinners now has a credible third address inside the community's own footprint. Eddie V's is a five-minute drive from most of Pelican Bay's high-rises. RH's atrium restaurant, when it opens, will be closer to Coronado and Bay Colony than any dining room outside the Foundation's own.
The tennis and racquets calendar tells you how quickly this recalibrates. A USTA Tennis Venue Services grant funded the renovation of Pelican Bay Community Park's six existing public HydroCourts, added two brand-new standalone HydroCourts, and installed lighting across all eight. Post-match dinners at Waterside are now a walk-off, not a drive. Small change, meaningful in aggregate.
The Squeeze And Other Summer Texture
The property is aware that summer visits from residents are what carry the center between February and February. Waterside has introduced a seasonal guest appreciation program dubbed "The Squeeze." Throughout July and August 2026, guests can enjoy complimentary ice-cold lemonade distributed from a custom traveling beverage cart during peak shopping hours every Friday and Saturday. A small gesture, but it is aimed at the exact resident who has the property to themselves right now.
That is the real read on this summer. The center is being repositioned for a fall and a season that the returning population has not yet arrived to see. The residents who live here year-round have a two-month head start on the reservations, the sightlines through the construction fencing, and the version of the room where the servers still remember your name after one visit.
The redevelopment is going to matter to Pelican Bay property values in ways worth their own analysis. For this July, though, it mostly matters as a pattern of choices already open to you. The tram is still running. The lemonade is still cold. The reservation grid is still soft.
If you are weighing what these changes mean for a Pelican Bay purchase, sale, or a move within the community's high-rises, Chiodo Group advises quietly on the addresses closest to the corner where all of this is happening. When you are ready to talk through what a Pelican Bay address should actually deliver over the next twelve months, get an instant home valuation and start the conversation.
