Drive north out of Port Royal on Gordon Drive in July and the two-mile arc between your gate and Fifth Avenue South looks different than it did last summer. Construction fencing wraps the beach end of 12th Avenue South where the Pier used to meet the sand. The old Port Royal Club footprint is a working job site behind screens. Two blocks off Third Street South, a brand-new hotel just cut its ribbon on a lot that sat empty for years.
For residents, the practical question this summer is not which project is most exciting. It is which of them changes your Saturday, and when the answer flips back. The short version: three projects that anchor the neighborhood's northern edge are all mid-transformation at once, on three separate timelines, and the interim routines matter more than any single ribbon-cutting.
Three construction fences within a five-minute drive
The Pier. The Naples Pier is not simply closed for repairs. The city held a groundbreaking on the sand on January 5, and the plan is to demolish and replace the entire historic structure over roughly eighteen months, with a reopening targeted for summer 2027. The new pier will sit at least three feet higher on larger concrete pilings, which is why the project is a full rebuild rather than a patch. If your habit was to walk down 12th Avenue South and out over the water on a Sunday morning, that habit is on pause for another year.
The Port Royal Club. The 2900 Gordon Drive site is halfway through a roughly $100 million rebuild by Suffolk Construction, from a Hart Howerton design in the West Indies tradition. The new 62,000-square-foot clubhouse will bring a Family Casual dining room with indoor and outdoor seating, a member lobby with a coffee bar, an outdoor Sunset Bar, a banquet room sized for up to 150, and a Gulf-front pool with cabanas. If you were planning around the "summer 2026" grand opening that appeared in earlier member materials, that window has shifted. Recent local reporting has the opening tracking to fall 2026 rather than summer, which is worth building into any dinner-party planning between now and then.
Olde Naples Hotel and JoJo's Bar. The redeveloped Plaza on Third Street site delivered this spring. Olde Naples Hotel opened at 200 Broad Street South in May, a 109-room property from the Opal Collection with a rooftop pool, cabanas, spa, and fitness center, designed by Hart Howerton with a central courtyard that pulls Third Street activity onto the site. Rooms start at $399 a night, which matters less than the fact that Port Royal residents now have a walkable place to put out-of-town guests during peak season without booking Fifth Avenue. Next door, JoJo's Bar, an Italian-American steakhouse, is scheduled to open in the landmark Olde Naples Building later this year.
Where the Saturday farmers market went for the summer
The Third Street South Farmers Market does not go dark in the summer, but it does move. From mid-November through April it sets up on Third Street South itself, between Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South. From May through the fall it relocates to the Neapolitan parking lot behind Tommy Bahama, same Saturday window of 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. If you have driven past the usual spot on a July morning and assumed it was closed for the season, that is the source of the confusion. Park behind Tommy Bahama and it is running.
Why the Club's schedule shift is the update that matters most
A one-quarter slip in a hundred-million-dollar clubhouse is unremarkable on a construction schedule. On a social calendar, it is the update that reshapes the year.
The original Port Royal Club summer 2026 target was set in the club's own timeline documents back in 2023, with demolition beginning summer 2024. Local coverage in the intervening two years walked that back to "late 2026" and then, this spring, to a fall opening. Members received an August 2025 assessment of $45,000 and the board's letter noted that 45 members resigned during the wait, with 23 residents from the Port Royal waiting list stepping in. That churn, and the pace of it, tells you the club is treating fall 2026 as firm rather than aspirational.
For a resident thinking about the practical rhythm of the coming months, the fall opening date is the one to plan against. If you host family over the Fourth or Labor Day, the beach club option is still off the board. If you host over Thanksgiving, it likely is not. Anyone selling a Port Royal home this summer is marketing into a window where the club is a rendering; anyone selling in December is marketing into a window where guests can be walked in for lunch. That is a real difference, and it is measured in weeks rather than years.
The walk that still works
With the Pier fenced and the Club behind screens, the intact piece of the summer walk is the Third Street South block itself, and it is arguably in better shape than it was a year ago. The Olde Naples Hotel filled in a long-empty parcel with something the district's own guides describe as scaled to the "vernacular" of the surrounding cottages, with the massing broken up and the building set back to preserve the neighboring historic frontages. That is not marketing language for real-estate purposes. It is the design intent as stated by the project's Hart Howerton principal, and it is the reason the new courtyard reads as an extension of Third Street rather than a hotel driveway.
The through-line for residents this summer is straightforward:
- Now through fall 2026: Pier fenced, Club fenced, farmers market behind Tommy Bahama, Olde Naples Hotel open, JoJo's Bar under fit-out next door.
- Fall 2026: Club opens. JoJo's Bar targeted to open in the Olde Naples Building. Farmers market returns to its Third Street footprint mid-November.
- Summer 2027: New Naples Pier reopens.
Read as a list, those look like separate projects. Read as a season, they are the same story: the northern edge of Port Royal is being rebuilt in place, on overlapping timelines, and the interim summer of 2026 is the last one in which all three are still in progress at the same time. Anyone who has lived on Galleon, Rum Row, or Nelson's Walk long enough to remember the pre-Ian Club knows the difference an amenity like that makes to a Tuesday evening. It is worth walking the block this summer while the fences are still up, if only to have a clear before-picture in your head when the after arrives.
If you are weighing what any of this means for a specific address, or thinking about how the fall 2026 Club opening might shape a listing or a purchase decision in the neighborhood, The Beretta Group lives in these micro-markets full-time and can walk you through what the calendar looks like from the driveway you're actually considering. Schedule Your Consultation when the timing is right for you.
