In Coquina Sands, the Real Four Seasons Story Is the House Next Door
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
Every account of the new Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, tells the same story. The resort opened last November on the 125-acre site of the old Naples Beach Hotel. The first residence closed in May at over $20 million, a 9,000-square-foot Beach House bought by local developer Phil McCabe. The Tom Fazio golf course, once slated for this fall, is now tracking toward a 2027 opening. Ninety-five golf-side residences are still phasing through 2028, priced from roughly $7 million to $22 million.
That story is true and it is also the wrong story if you already own a house a few streets away in Coquina Sands. The number that matters to you did not close in a Four Seasons sales office. It showed up on Gulf Shore Boulevard North, at the address of a 1960s beachfront cooperative that no one is renovating.
At 1624 Gulf Shore Blvd. N., right where Coquina Sands meets Moorings along Hurricane Harbor, a low-rise co-op called Harbour Club sat vacant for years. It was not historic in any protected sense. It was just old, mid-century, twenty homes, the kind of building that in a slower market gets a new roof, a paint job, and another twenty years of quiet ownership.
Instead, the Naples Design Review Board approved a full replacement: Harbour House, a three-building, 14-residence luxury condo project designed by MHK Architecture, with private docks and a resort-style pool along the waterway. The project was cleared to begin construction last summer, which puts it well past groundbreaking by now. During the seawall removal that preceded it, Naples Casamore president Jeff Miller raised concerns that the work lacked seismic monitoring and had already caused vibrations affecting neighboring homes.
Nobody bought Harbour Club for the building. They bought it for the water frontage and the fact that a $1 billion neighbor had just landed within walking distance. The structure was demolished because, at that address, in this year, the land had become worth more without it.
This is the part that does not show up in a listing description. When a resort-grade neighbor arrives, it does not just add one glamorous new comp to the search results. It resets the ratio every appraiser and every buyer's agent runs in their head between land value and structure value.
Before the Four Seasons, a 1960s concrete block home on a canal in Coquina Sands competed on its own terms: square footage, updated kitchen, a newer roof. After the Four Seasons, that same home increasingly gets evaluated as a parcel that happens to have a house standing on it. The question shifts from "what is this house worth" to "what is this lot worth, and how much of the existing structure is actually adding value versus just sitting in the way."
Coquina Sands is a useful place to watch this play out because it was never branded, never gated, and never marketed as an amenity community. It was platted in 1954 and 1957, streets named for shells and flowers, built around Lowdermilk Park and a canal system dredged from Hurricane Harbor. It has spent seventy years being a quiet, unbranded neighborhood next to whatever grand hotel happened to be at the north end of Gulf Shore Boulevard. The difference now is the scale of what just moved in, and the pace at which the surrounding parcels are being repriced to match it.
This is where twenty-five years of writing luxury homeowners insurance before real estate changes how I read a listing. The land-versus-structure math is not just an appraisal exercise. It is also, quietly, an insurance decision, and it lands differently depending on the age of the house.
According to Triple Crown Homes, Florida's building code has been rewritten twice since 2002, most recently with the eighth edition. Homes built to the modern code are demonstrably better risks in a storm, which is one reason concrete block construction with a recent roof typically earns better rates than an older frame home with the original roof still on it. Insurers scrutinize roof age closely in this market. A roof past fifteen years can trigger a coverage denial or a real surcharge, independent of anything else about the house.
Then there is the rule that decides what happens after real damage. Under FEMA's substantial improvement and substantial damage standard, often called the 50 percent rule, if an older home that predates current code sustains damage exceeding half its market value, the whole structure has to be brought up to today's code during repair, not just the damaged portion. For a well-kept 1962 ranch, that is a manageable if expensive proposition. For a home already being priced by buyers as a teardown, it changes the entire calculation. A storm claim on a house like that can turn a renovation decision into a rebuild decision overnight, and the owner's insurer will not be sentimental about which one it prefers.
None of this means an older Coquina Sands home is uninsurable or unsellable. It means the insurance conversation and the land value conversation are now the same conversation, and an owner who treats them separately is negotiating from behind.
If you hold one of these homes, three questions are worth asking before you list, renovate, or simply renew a policy without thinking about it.
None of this is a reason to panic about an older home in Coquina Sands. It is a reason to price it correctly, insure it correctly, and decide on purpose whether you are the seller of a house or the seller of a lot with an option attached.
Walk from Lowdermilk Park north toward the Four Seasons gate and you pass both stories at once. On one side, a resort phasing in new construction through 2028, golf-side residences still being delivered, a Fazio course now aimed at 2027. On the other, a 1960s co-op demolished for a replacement project, and an association president on record about seawall vibrations from the construction next door.
Those are not two separate developments. They are one mechanism, visible at two different stages, and it is still moving through the rest of Coquina Sands' older housing stock one parcel at a time.
If you are trying to figure out whether your Coquina Sands home is worth renovating, selling as is, or positioning as a rebuild opportunity, that is exactly the kind of decision that benefits from someone who has priced Naples coastal construction from the insurance side as well as the real estate side. You can start with a home valuation that looks at your parcel the way today's buyers actually do, or browse the Coquina Sands neighborhood guide for more on what is changing block by block.
Does proximity to the Four Seasons automatically raise my insurance premium? Not directly. Premiums are driven by your home's own construction type, roof age, and code compliance, not by what is being built nearby. What proximity does is raise the stakes of getting that underwriting conversation right, because the gap between an under-insured older home and a fully modern rebuild next door is now wider than it used to be.
Should I renovate my older home or treat it as a future teardown? That depends on the specific parcel, its water access, and how the current structure compares to what a builder would pay for the land alone. It is worth running both numbers side by side before committing to either path.
Reach out through Samantha Kiffney, Naples resident of more than 25 years and Coldwell Banker Global Luxury advisor, to talk through what your specific address is actually worth in this market, structure and land both. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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Whether helping families identify the ideal neighborhood, advising on waterfront estates, or navigating Naples' luxury gated communities, I focus on matching each client with not only the right property, but the right lifestyle. My deep local knowledge, combined with the global reach of Coldwell Banker Global Luxury, allows me to connect clients with opportunities both on and off the market.
