Fifty-nine concrete pilings from the old Naples Pier are now on the bottom of the Gulf, about 10 miles out from Gordon Pass in roughly 40 feet of water. On April 24, 2026, the City of Naples and its rebuild contractors placed them at Wasmer Reef, as WINK News reported. Back at 12th Avenue South, the new pier won't open until July 2027.
For anyone in Aqualane Shores with a boat on the canal, that changes how the next nine months look. The landmark most of Naples has to wait for already has a public section, and you get there through the same inlet you use for every other run.
Where the old pier actually went
Most of the old pier came down in pieces long before the demolition crews arrived. When Hurricane Ian hit on September 28, 2022, about 140 feet of the structure fell into the Gulf, including the end shelter and more than 30 pilings. City engineers decided the rest was compromised and should be replaced entirely. Demolition finished on April 13, 2026.
Eleven days after that, the reef deployment began. The City did not landfill the concrete. It used a reef deployment option under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit, with Shoreline Foundation Inc. and the marine engineering firm Turrell, Hall & Associates handling the work. Dive teams checked the site before and after the drop. Pilings that didn't go to the reef went to a recycling facility to be crushed into aggregate for road construction.
That puts the 2026 pier in two places.
| Offshore at Wasmer Reef | At the 12th Avenue South beach end | |
|---|---|---|
| What's there | 59 pilings from the old pier | 193 new reinforced-concrete pilings |
| Depth or height | About 40 feet down, with 15 feet of relief | Deck to sit three feet higher above the water than the old pier |
| Status | Placed in April 2026 | Last piling driven October 7, 2026 |
| Open to the public | Yes, by boat | July 2027 |
Sources disagree slightly on the weight of what went down. WINK put it at more than 300 tons of demolished pier concrete. Collier County's reef location table lists the "Wasmer Naples Pier Reef" at 250 tons and records the deployment as April 27, 2026. The City gives April 24.
A reef with a ten-year head start
The pilings joined an established reef. Wasmer Reef started in 2015 as a joint project paid for with BP oil spill grants and private donations. The pier deployment is the eighth reef placed at the site. The name comes from the Wasmer family, who donated $100,000 for the naming opportunity, according to the Naples Daily News in February 2015.
The county table shows how the reef was built. In January and February 2015, six separate deployments put down concrete culverts, slabs, pilings and junction boxes, each around 500 tons, all in 40 to 41 feet of water. A set of reef modules followed that October. The pier pilings sit right next to that older structure.
That history affects what you'll see. WINK describes the established reef as covered in corals, aquatic vegetation, invertebrates, bivalves and tunicates, which give food and cover to young and adult fish. A 2015 City Council memo listed the species divers had seen at the City's reefs in general: cobia, amberjack, red grouper, yellowtail and mangrove snapper, goliath grouper and lane snapper. The new pilings have been down about six months, and they're joining a habitat that has been growing for more than ten years.
The run out of Gordon Pass
Gordon Pass is the inlet Aqualane Shores boats already use for Keewaydin. The new sand there is a story of its own, covered in our look at the rebuilt sandbar. Wasmer Reef is the next step out. Collier County lists the pier deployment at these numbers:
- Position: 26° 2.029' N, 81° 58.585' W
- Depth: 40 feet
- Relief: 15 feet above the bottom
- Material: 59 concrete pilings
The older Wasmer sets show up nearby in the same table, at 26° 1.8' to 26° 1.9' N, so the site covers a small cluster of structures, not a single point. Collier County's Coastal Zone Management artificial reef program keeps that table. Size limits, bag limits and seasons for anything caught there are set by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, so check them before you go.
There's also a second new spot off the same pass. On August 18, the Coastal Conservation Association Florida dropped dozens of globe-shaped concrete structures to the bottom to create the CCA Florida Taylor-Martin Reef off Gordon's Pass, the Naples Daily News reported on September 14, 2026. That makes two new structures off Gordon Pass this year, one made from a Naples landmark and one built from scratch, and both went down while the pier itself was still a construction zone.
Back at the beach, the pilings are done
The milestone at 12th Avenue South came on October 7, when Shoreline Foundation drove the last of the 193 reinforced-concrete pilings for the new pier. The new piles are 18 inches square, up from 14 inches, which the City calls a 65 percent boost. They come in 70-, 85- and 100-foot lengths, all longer than the longest piles in the old pier. The extra capacity is what lets the new deck sit three feet higher, and the structure uses nearly three times as much poured concrete.
Here's how the year has gone and what the City expects next:
- January 5 and 6, 2026: groundbreaking ceremony, then construction begins.
- May 5: divers start a month of debris removal, including pilings from the 1990s buried in the sand.
- June 26: first concrete pour. The whole project needs about 602 cubic yards.
- July 24: two-thirds of the new decking has arrived.
- September 18: the mid-pavilion pour pushes the project past 50 percent of its concrete.
- October 7: last piling driven.
- Early 2027: structural work expected to finish, then the Ipe hardwood decking and structures go on.
- July 2027: scheduled reopening.
The finished pier will keep its 1,000-foot length and 12-foot width, with bench bump-outs and Polynesian-style rooflines on the midpoint and end structures, Gulfshore Business reported. One familiar piece won't come back. State and federal rules don't allow the old mid-pier concession to be rebuilt, so City Council approved portable food and beverage carts at the mid-pavilion and a small Naples Police and Beach Patrol substation on the pier.
This winter is the fourth season without the pier, as the Naples Daily News noted on October 6. Until July, the pier, its stairs, restrooms and showers, and 12th Avenue South west of Gulf Shore Boulevard South stay closed. Only the western third of the pier parking lot is open, because construction needs the rest. Beach access runs through pedestrian bypasses at the Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South beach ends, and both have restrooms. The City's project page posts each new milestone, and the next big one is the first Ipe planks going down on the deck.
If you keep a boat in Aqualane Shores and want help planning around the water, from HomeWatch for the months you're away to the vendors who keep a dock ready for runs out Gordon Pass, The Beretta Group is glad to share what we know. Schedule Your Consultation, and we'll talk about the canal, the pass and what's past it.
