Waterside Shops Gets Its New Stores This Season. Its New Dinner Tables Come Later.

Waterside Shops lost Brio Italian Grille, Häagen-Dazs and L'Occitane in the first half of 2026, and it lined up three larger restaurants to anchor the next phase. Only one of those is serving dinner as the 2026–27 season begins. The boutiques are a different story. New stores and relocated ones are opening across the center through the fall and holidays, so the shopping side of Waterside has mostly turned over. The dining side is still partly behind construction fencing.

For Pelican Bay, Waterside is the shopping center at the Seagate Drive edge of the community. That split decides what a December evening there looks like this year. You can shop the new storefronts and book a table at the corner that is finished. The two other major restaurants are still on their way.

Three Closed, Three Coming, One Open

The closings came early in the year. Brio Italian Grille permanently closed in April after a long run at Waterside, and Häagen-Dazs closed there as well, according to Gulfshore Business's midyear restaurant tracker. L'Occitane closed at the end of May along with Häagen-Dazs, and their units are now set aside for a new boutique.

Waterside announced its three new restaurants this spring: Eddie V's, Buck & Rider and a restaurant inside a new RH gallery. Here is where each one stands now.

Brio's dining room is being replaced with roughly the same amount of restaurant space. What changes is how much of it opens before season ends.

The Seagate Corner Is Finished

Eddie V's was the first to open because it had the simplest job. The Darden Restaurants concept moved into an extensively renovated former bank office on the southwest corner of the open-air center and opened June 7, Gulfshore Business reported. The menu centers on seafood flown in from around the world and hand-carved steaks, and live jazz plays nightly in the V Lounge. Its address is 765 Seagate Drive.

That makes the Seagate end the one part of Waterside's dining plan that is already in its finished form. It has also been through a slow summer, which means its first full season starts with the restaurant up and running. The other two projects are opening into busier months.

The Nordstrom Site Is the Season's Open Question

The largest project in the plan sits on ground that has been empty for years. Nordstrom closed its Waterside store in 2020, and Naples-based DeAngelis Diamond is now building a nearly 30,000-square-foot RH campus on that footprint. According to architectural plans described by Gulfshore Business, RH Naples is a one-story building of six separate galleries with skylights, connected by landscaped courtyards, glass-roofed walkways and outdoor seating with fountains and palm trees. Those galleries surround a central 174-seat restaurant and wine bar under a long glass atrium.

On its own, that restaurant would be one of the larger new dining rooms on this stretch of Tamiami Trail. It is also built into a furniture gallery, so the dining and the shopping on this end of the center depend on each other.

The timing is the uncertain part. The same Gulfshore Business report put the expected opening near the end of 2026. It also quoted RH's representatives saying the company had not formally announced timing and could not provide project details. One clue that work is moving forward is RH's own careers portal. In late August 2026 it listed Gallery Leader and Associate Gallery Leader positions for a "Naples Gallery - Waterside." A store hiring its leaders is usually getting close to opening. Still, no opening date has been announced as this season starts.

Nate Forbes, managing partner of The Forbes Company, which owns the center, framed the work in his remarks to Gulfshore Business: "As the next chapter for Waterside Shops is unfolding, we will continue to hold our place as the number one retail destination in this region."

Buck & Rider Moved Its Target Into 2027

The former Brio space is currently barricaded while crews convert it into Buck & Rider. The restaurant plans to serve locally sourced seafood and ingredients alongside carefully chosen international seafood.

Its timeline has already slipped once. When Waterside announced its new restaurants this spring, Buck & Rider was described as coming in late 2026. By August 22, 2026, the Naples Daily News was reporting an early-2027 target. The operator's hiring page gives the same timing: it reads "MANAGEMENT HIRING NOW" and "Opening Early 2027," and says front-of-house and back-of-house hiring will come after that.

That order matters. A restaurant still hiring managers, with its kitchen and dining staff to follow, has a training period ahead of it before it can seat guests. Early 2027 falls within this winter, but the holidays will pass with Brio's old corner still under construction.

The Shops Are Filling In, Address by Address

The retail side is moving much faster. Most of this season's new and relocated stores are concentrated in a few buildings along Waterside's Tamiami Trail addresses:

• 5475 building, near Sephora: Vuori is now open at 5475-7. Anthropologie closed its old store on Monday, October 19, to move next door to 5475-1. The center has said opening announcements are coming but has not posted a date.
• 5455 building: Love Shack Fancy is announced for Holiday 2026 at 5455-1, in the former Häagen-Dazs and L'Occitane units. Its Waterside listing still says "Coming Holiday 2026." TWP is announced for early 2027 at 5455-7, near Tory Burch.
• 5435 building, near Gucci: Piranesi was announced for fall 2026 at 5435-19, and its Waterside listing now says "Now Open."
• 5485 building: Peter Millar is announced for late 2026 at 5485-9.
• Omega: The watchmaker is operating from a temporary boutique at 5375 Tamiami Trail N., Suite 11. Construction on its permanent store at 5555 Tamiami Trail N., Suite 15, was expected to begin in summer 2026.
• Dior: Opened a standalone boutique in June after moving out of its store-within-a-store inside Saks Fifth Avenue.

The two sides line up differently in time. L'Occitane and Häagen-Dazs both closed in late May, and the boutique replacing them is aiming for the holidays. Brio closed a month earlier, in April, and its replacement is aiming for 2027. The stores were mostly moving into existing units or relocating within the center. The restaurants needed new kitchens and, at the Nordstrom site, an entirely new building.

How a December Visit Lines Up

With Eddie V's open and RH and Buck & Rider still coming, here is how the rest of the calendar fits around Waterside this season.

1. Through early November: Eddie V's is the only one of the three new restaurants serving. The Anthropologie move and Love Shack Fancy's holiday opening are the next storefronts to watch.
2. November 8: Artis—Naples holds its free fall Community Day. The Baker Museum's The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams runs through February 14, 2027, and Florida Contemporary 2026–27 runs through June 27, 2027.
3. November 24–29: Hamilton plays Artis—Naples as part of the 2026–27 Broadway series. It is a busy week for pre-show dinner reservations, and only one of Waterside's three new restaurants is open for it.
4. December 29 through January 3: Death Becomes Her plays Artis over the New Year's holiday. The Artis season also runs under the theme "To Light: The Art of Hope," with Alexander Shelley leading the Naples Philharmonic in his third season and all nine Beethoven symphonies on the program.
5. Early 2027: Buck & Rider and TWP are both aiming for this window. RH is still projected for near the end of 2026, and its opening is the one the rest of the north end depends on.

When the last of the three restaurants opens, Waterside will have more dining space than it had before Brio closed.

If you are weighing a Pelican Bay residence and want to know how the changes at Waterside affect day-to-day life at the community's Seagate Drive edge, The Grant Group can walk you through it based on what we see in this market every week. Request a Private Consultation, and we will talk through the buildings and streets that matter for how you plan to live here.