Naples Pier Rebuild Update: What’s Next in Old Naples
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
Walk south along Gulf Shore Boulevard toward the foot of 12th Avenue South this month and you will notice something that was not there in the spring. Not a finished pier. Not yet. But shape. Concrete bents, poured and curing, standing in the water where four years of demolition, debris removal and federal paperwork occupied the same stretch of sand without much to show for it above the waterline.
For most of that time, the Naples Pier rebuild was a funding story. FEMA applications, Army Corps permits, engineering amendments. This summer it became a construction story, and if you have not walked past that fenced-off stretch since early spring, you have missed the exact point where the two stopped being the same thing.
Hurricane Ian took roughly 460 feet of the pier when it came ashore on September 28, 2022, including the final 140 feet that sank into the Gulf along with more than 30 pilings. Only about 100 feet remained standing, and the city reopened that fragment six weeks later, closed to fishing, open mostly for the walk and the view.
What followed was three years of the slow machinery that any federally funded coastal project requires: FEMA project development, an Army Corps emergency permit application, a design RFP, a Federal Emergency Management Agency application filed in February 2023. The final permits did not clear until October 2025. FEMA did not obligate its funding until December 12 of that year. Groundbreaking came January 5, 2026, more than three years after the storm.
Since then, the pace has changed noticeably:
Those last two dates are the ones worth noticing. For nearly four years, progress on this project meant paperwork moving through an office somewhere. As of this summer, it means concrete going into the water on a schedule you can track from the beach.
The practical question for anyone who lives within walking distance of that stretch, whether you are coming from Old Naples proper or up from Aqualane Shores to the south, is simpler than the construction schedule: where do you actually walk now.
The pier structure itself, along with its stairs, restrooms and showers, has been closed for the duration of the project, roughly 18 months from the January start. So has 12th Avenue South west of Gulf Shore Boulevard South. But the beach has not gone anywhere. The city set up pedestrian bypasses at the Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South beach ends specifically to keep that access open, and both bypass points include restrooms. If your usual route to the water ran straight down 12th, you have likely already rerouted through one of those two without thinking much about it.
Parking took a smaller hit than the pier itself. The lot at 12th Avenue South and Gulf Shore Boulevard South is split: the western third remains open to the public, while the eastern two-thirds is fenced for construction staging. It is a narrower lot than it used to be, not a closed one.
None of this touches the thing most people actually come for. Naples faces due west, and the sunset over the Gulf from that beach looks exactly the way it always has, pier or no pier. What changed is the walk there.
If you search for when the pier reopens, you will find two different answers, and only one of them still holds up.
An engineering contract amendment from December 11, 2024 extended a target completion date to November 15, 2026. That date predates the actual start of construction by more than a year. It was written before FEMA obligated funding, before the final design cleared City Council, before Shoreline Foundation broke ground. A number set that far in advance of the real construction clock was always going to move once the clock actually started.
The clock that matters is the one that began January 5, 2026, when demolition started. City officials have described the build as roughly 18 months from that point, which lands the realistic reopening somewhere in the middle to latter half of 2027, not the closing months of this year. If you have been holding onto the 2026 date because it is the one that still circulates on travel sites and forums, it is worth adjusting your expectations by about a year.
The pier that eventually reopens will look familiar from the beach and function differently once you are standing on it. The new design, finalized by City Council on March 4, 2026, raises the structure's elevation by at least three feet to reduce vulnerability to storm surge, a direct response to what Ian did the last time. It keeps the long fishing deck locals actually use, along with the Polynesian-style roofline at the midpoint and the end that has defined the pier's silhouette for decades. It adds bench bump-outs along the walkway to ease foot traffic congestion, an underwater camera for viewing marine life, and ADA-accessible restrooms alongside a small beach patrol office. There will not be room for a food truck. Council settled on a portable concession cart instead.
One detail is worth knowing if you had a bench with a plaque on it, or a parent or grandparent who did. The benches damaged by Ian were removed before construction began, and the ones still salvageable are being stored by the city rather than discarded. Residents and plaque owners can reach out to Roxanne Nieto in the city's Community Services department to arrange pickup. The plaques mounted on the pier's facility building wall, separate from the benches, are staying put through construction and are not expected to move once the project wraps.
The total project runs about $26.3 million, funded through a mix of FEMA grants, state money, city bonds, county tourist development tax dollars and public donations channeled through the Collier Community Foundation. Shoreline Foundation, the Broward County-based contractor, holds the roughly $23.45 million construction contract, with Turrell, Hall & Associates and MHK Architecture overseeing design and engineering through completion.
This is the seventh time in the pier's history that Naples has rebuilt it after storm damage, following hurricanes in 1910, 1926, 1944, 1960 and now Ian. The 1888 original was never meant to survive a century and a half of Gulf weather unchanged, and neither is this version. It is meant to survive the next one better than the last one did.
For now, the walk is a little longer than it used to be, the parking lot a little tighter, and the end of the pier itself still eleven months from a line in the water. But the sand is the same sand, the sunset is the same sunset, and for the first time in a long while, something is visibly rising out of the water to meet it again.
If you are curious about what else is shifting in Old Naples this season, or you would simply like a local's read on the neighborhood beyond the headlines, Samantha Kiffney would welcome the conversation. Let's Connect.
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