For four years, a walk down Gulf Shore Boulevard North in Coquina Sands has meant passing two unfinished things. At the north end, the playground at Lowdermilk Park has sat empty since Hurricane Ian tore through it in September 2022, a patch of mulch and sand with nothing left standing on it. At the south end, past the sea grape hedges, the old Naples Beach Hotel site spent years behind construction fencing while a five-year rebuild worked its way through permits, pilings, and a new Four Seasons flag. Two different owners, two different timelines, one stretch of boulevard that has felt like it was waiting on something since before most current residents' HOA dues went up the last time.
Over the past year, both ends have closed the gap. Nobody planned it that way. It is just what happens when a storm-repair backlog and a resort rebuild finally clear their separate finish lines within months of each other. But if you live here, the practical result is the same either way: the walk you have been taking for years has a beginning and an end again.
What Ian Actually Took, And What The City Is Finally Putting Back
The playground on Lowdermilk's north side was one of the more visible casualties of the 2022 storm, and it has taken this long to get a contract, not just a plan. In June 2026, the Naples City Council took up a $699,787 agreement with Playmore West Inc. to design, purchase, and install a new playground and a covered gazebo on the site of the structure Ian destroyed.
The funding tells its own story about how long this has been in motion. The money comes from a combination of two previously approved park enhancement projects, plus a $250,000 donation from the Nommensen family, with the city adding another $250,000 from the Beach Fund to close the gap. The gazebo was actually supposed to happen as part of a 2025 park improvement project, but it got shelved when construction bids came in over budget. This is the first time the funding and the vendor have lined up at the same time since the storm.
It is not the only work happening at Lowdermilk this year. A separate city bid opened in March 2026 for a $205,000 drainage and sidewalk improvement project, targeting the northeast corner of the property and the sidewalks running along the park's north line. Neither project has a public completion date yet. What has changed is that both are now funded, contracted, and moving, which is further than this stretch of the park has gotten since the storm.
The Other End Of The Walk
Head the other direction and the story is a different kind of long wait. Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, opened last November on the footprint of the old Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club at 801 Gulf Shore Blvd North, and the part that matters for a Coquina Sands resident is not the hotel rooms. It is that HB's and the Sunset Bar, the two beachfront spots that anchored the old hotel for decades, came back on their original footprint and are open to the public, not just to guests staying there.
HB's is named for Henry B. Watkins Sr., who founded the original hotel in 1946 and whose family ran it for more than seventy years. When it reopened to the public on November 17, more than two hundred people crowded the beachfront deck on the first day, many of them locals who had not had a reason to walk onto that stretch of sand since the old hotel closed. The restaurant now runs a seafood-forward menu built around a raw bar and crudo, with expanded deck seating and oversized umbrellas that keep it usable even at the hottest part of the day.
Sunset Bar next door has been reimagined with neon accents, Latin-leaning small plates, and tropical cocktails, but it kept the part that made it a local institution in the first place: live music Friday through Sunday starting at 6 p.m. through the summer, and the nightly ritual of blowing a conch shell to mark the moment the sun goes down. Neither of these details is new. Both are restorations of habits that existed before the old hotel closed, which is a different thing than a resort inventing a tradition to sell rooms.
A few practical notes if you have not been back since it reopened:
- HB's runs lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., a beverage-only window from 3 to 5, and dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. Reservations are recommended, especially during peak season.
- Sunset Bar is first come, first served, no reservation needed.
- Both are open to the public. You do not need to be a hotel guest to sit down at either one.
- Valet is $15 with restaurant validation, or you can self-park or walk over from the beach.
There is a small architectural detail worth knowing if you live in this neighborhood specifically. The resort's entrance still nods to the wave-shaped coquina sign that used to mark the old hotel, cast in the same shellcrete material the original sign used. It is a small echo, intentional or not, of the shell rock this neighborhood takes its own name from.
Why It Matters That Both Landed So Close Together
Here is the part that is easy to miss if you only think about these as two separate news items. The Naples Pier itself has been closed since Ian hit in 2022, and the city's rebuild is not targeting a reopening until sometime around 2027. For years, that has meant the closest thing to a public beachfront gathering spot on this end of Naples has literally not existed. Sunset Bar's nightly conch shell and Friday music are not competing with the pier for that role. They are filling a role the pier used to play and currently cannot.
Put the two pieces together and the shape of the year becomes clearer. A city government finally closed the funding gap on a four-year-old storm repair. A private resort finished a much longer rebuild on its own schedule. Neither timeline was coordinated with the other, and neither was coordinated with the pier's much longer closure. But a resident walking Gulf Shore Boulevard this year gets the benefit of all three landing close together anyway: a playground finally funded and moving instead of stalled, a beachfront restaurant and bar open to the public instead of fenced off, and a public gathering point at sunset that has not existed in this exact form since before the storm.
That is the actual story here. Not that a park got a grant, and not that a resort reopened a restaurant. It is that the two ends of the same walk, closed for different reasons on different timelines, both came back into use in the same twelve months, and that changes what an ordinary evening in Coquina Sands actually looks like right now.
If you have been away from this stretch of the boulevard for a while, it is worth the walk again. And if watching this neighborhood evolve this closely has you curious about what a home along Gulf Shore Boulevard is actually worth in today's market, Maureen Sexson has spent decades tracking Coquina Sands block by block and is glad to talk through what it means for your address.
