Walk west from any of the canal streets in Aqualane Shores toward the water and you will eventually hit the same chain link fence that has stood there since the rebuild broke ground this January. Before that, the fence hid nothing much happening. Permits sat with the Army Corps of Engineers. FEMA paperwork moved through federal channels. The historic pier at the foot of 12th Avenue South stayed exactly as Hurricane Ian left it in September 2022: about 460 feet of structure compromised, roughly 140 feet of it and more than 30 pilings sitting on the Gulf floor.
That waiting period is over. What is happening behind the fence this summer is not the slow-moving paperwork project you got used to seeing nothing come of for three years. It has a different rhythm now, and it is worth understanding why, because it changes how you should be routing your evenings for the next year.
The Fence Line Stopped Waiting on the Weather
The City of Naples broke ground on the rebuild in January 2026, more than three years after Ian. Since then the work has moved through a sequence any resident who has watched a barge get chased off the water by a squall will appreciate. In April, crews deployed concrete pilings to expand the artificial reef at Wasmer Reef, first established in 2015. The following month, contractor Shoreline Foundation Inc. began a separate, monthlong dive effort to clear decades of buried debris, including pilings left over from the 1990s, clearing the way to safely install the new pilings.
The change that matters most for anyone timing an evening walk happened in mid-June, when the crew started installing a trestle, a bridge-like working platform running along the south side of the pier. Before the trestle, offshore barges had to retreat whenever conditions turned, and the whole job paused with them. With the trestle in place, crews can keep pouring concrete for the pier's bents, the paired pilings and crossbeams that will carry the new structure, even when the water is too rough for the barges to work from. That is why the pours have started stacking up close together: the first bent pour landed June 26, 2026, the second on July 9. A project that spent years defined by paperwork is now defined by concrete, on a schedule that no longer bends to a single afternoon of chop.
MHK Architecture, the Naples-based firm behind the redesign, marked the January groundbreaking with a statement that captures what residents are actually watching rebuild.
"We, at MHK, are extremely proud of being a part of the Pier reconstruction."
The firm's president, Matthew Kragh, said the team built detailing into the structure meant to hold up for generations, not just survive the next storm. The pier has already been rebuilt or repaired after hurricanes in 1910, 1926, 1944, and 1960, plus a full reconstruction in 2015 and damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017, so there is no shortage of institutional memory to draw on.
What the Closure Actually Blocks, and What It Doesn't
The fence covers more ground than just the pier deck. Access to 12th Avenue South west of Gulf Shore Boulevard South is closed for the duration, along with the pier's stairs, restrooms, and showers. The parking lot at that corner is split: the western third stays open to the public, while the eastern two thirds are fenced for construction staging.
None of that touches the actual beach. The city set up pedestrian bypasses at the Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South beach ends specifically so residents would not lose access to the sand or the sunset while the pier itself sits inside a work zone. Both bypasses include restrooms, and both stay open for the length of the project. If your usual route has been straight down 12th, the fix is a two or three block shift, not a different neighborhood.
The Better Route This Season
The 13th Avenue South bypass happens to land you almost on top of another fixture that has nothing to do with the storm at all. The Third Street South Farmers Market sets up every Saturday morning from 7:30 to 11:30 in the large lot at the corner of Gordon Drive and 13th Avenue South, the same corner your bypass walk already passes. First established in 1994, the market has grown to roughly 60 vendors selling produce, seafood, pastries, and prepared food, all of it from local growers and independent merchants rather than chains. It is the kind of Saturday morning routine that predates the pier closure by decades and will still be running long after the fence comes down.
If your evening walk usually ended with dinner near the water, Third Street South still covers that ground too. The Continental, Campiello, and Osteria Tulia sit within the same short walk, close enough that swapping a pier sunset for a table on Third Street costs you almost nothing in distance.
What Comes Back When the Fence Comes Down
The rebuilt pier will look familiar from a distance and different up close. Based on the approved design, here is what changes:
- The deck rises at least three feet higher than before, aimed at reducing storm surge vulnerability the next time a major hurricane tracks through.
- The Polynesian-style roof lines at the midpoint and the end of the pier are staying, along with bump-outs built specifically for bench seating and unobstructed views.
- An underwater camera will let visitors watch marine life from land, a first for the structure.
- There will be no return of a sit-down restaurant. FEMA guidelines bar permanent structures built over water, so the city settled on a portable concession cart instead, enough for water, ice cream, and soda without competing with the restaurants already doing that business on Fifth Avenue South.
- The benches damaged by Ian are being stored by the city rather than replaced outright, and residents or plaque owners can contact the Community Services department to claim theirs. The plaques mounted on the pier's facility building are staying put and are not expected to move once construction wraps.
The project carries an approved cost of $26.3 million, with roughly $14 million of that coming from FEMA, just over half the total, and the remainder split between state grants and local funds. Construction is expected to run about 18 months from the January start, which points to a reopening somewhere around mid to late 2027. The city has been candid that large infrastructure projects can slip past initial estimates, so treat that window as a planning guide rather than a fixed date.
The Walk Is Different Now, Not Gone
The easy read on the pier closure is that it is simply an inconvenience to wait out. The more accurate read, based on what has actually happened this summer, is that the project stopped being static in January and has been visibly changing month to month ever since. A resident who last really looked at the fence line back in the spring is going to see a different structure taking shape than the one sitting there in July. That is worth knowing if you have been avoiding the walk altogether. There is more to see now than there was six months ago, and the bypasses at Broad and 13th mean you never actually lost the beach, the sunset, or the walk itself. You just lost one particular stretch of pier decking, for a little while longer.
Aqualane Shores residents have always measured the neighborhood by how close everything sits within walking distance, from the canal docks to Third Street South. The pier rebuild is a reminder that even the fixtures assumed permanent get rebuilt on their own schedule, and that the smart move is usually to keep walking rather than wait for the fence to disappear.
If you are weighing a move within Aqualane Shores, curious what a canal-front lot near the bypass routes is worth this season, or simply want a local read on how projects like this affect day to day life in the neighborhood, Annie Hagstrom knows this stretch of Naples block by block. Book an appointment to talk through it.
