On the southwest corner of Waterside Shops, where Seagate Drive meets Myra Janco Daniels Boulevard, a former bank office has been rebuilt into a 9,991-square-foot restaurant. Eddie V's Prime Seafood opened there on June 7. It serves fish flown in from around the world, hand-carved steaks, and live jazz every night in the V Lounge. A bank branch was a five-minute errand. The restaurant that replaced it is meant to fill an evening.

That one corner shows what is happening across the whole center. Since last spring, Waterside has added fine dining at three of its edges, filled its interior with larger flagship stores, and let go of several long-running tenants that made it an easy place for a quick stop. For anyone who lives a short drive away in Pelican Bay, the center at 5415 Tamiami Trail N. is becoming somewhere you plan an evening around.

Three Restaurants, All on the Perimeter

Waterside announced its new dining lineup in an April 28 release: Eddie V's, Buck & Rider, and an RH restaurant. They join Bricktop's, California Pizza Kitchen and True Food Kitchen, which were already there. All three new restaurants sit at the edges of the property, where diners can park and walk in without crossing the mall.

Eddie V's is the only one of the three open today. It is the first regional location of the Darden Restaurants brand, which Gulfshore Business placed on the same upscale tier as Darden's Capital Grille.

Buck & Rider is taking over Brio's former space at the north end of the center, at 5505 Tamiami Trail N. It is an Arizona seafood concept from Hi Noon Hospitality, and Naples will be its first location outside the Southwest. The 7,617-square-foot space is still behind barricades. This summer, the Naples Press reported an opening target of early 2027. Waterside's Buck & Rider listing gives the same timing. The restaurant's own Naples page still points to a late 2026 opening, so early 2027 is the more realistic expectation.

RH Naples is the largest project and will take the longest. Naples-based DeAngelis Diamond is building a Restoration Hardware campus of nearly 30,000 square feet on the site of the former Nordstrom, which closed in 2020. The design connects a series of home-furnishings galleries by landscaped walkways, with a restaurant in a glass atrium at the center. The Naples Press reported that RH hopes to open near the end of this year. In spring, Gulfshore Business described the building as a single-story store and restaurant with six separate showroom galleries around the atrium, with a late 2026 target. No exact opening day has been announced.

Put together, the center will have added three destination restaurants at its edges within about a year. Brio was the only one of those spaces that already served dinner.

What Made Room

New tenants needed space, and a group of familiar names gave it up. In a spring column, Gulfshore Business's Tim Aten wrote that owners of regional retail centers have grown more selective about their tenant mix. He described The Forbes Co., the Michigan-based owner of Waterside that specializes in luxury retail, as having "taken it to the next level lately."

These tenants left in the first half of 2026:

• Brio Italian Grille closed April 12 after 20 years at the north end of the center. Its parent company had filed for Chapter 11 the previous August.
• Häagen-Dazs left by May 31 after 25 years at Waterside. The franchise owner still runs the Häagen-Dazs at Coastland Center.
• L'Occitane en Provence closed so that its unit could be combined with the old ice cream shop next door.
• Ann Taylor and White House Black Market both left early in the year.

What replaces them shows the direction. An ice cream counter with a quarter-century of history and a skincare shop are being combined into a single 1,356-square-foot suite for Love Shack Fancy. Waterside lists it for Holiday 2026. A dessert stop has become a fashion boutique, and the dining has moved out to the restaurants at the edges.

The Shuffle Inside the Center

Much of the change inside the center started with a single move. In January, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma opened together in the two-story outparcel at U.S. 41 and Seagate Drive, which had been home to Barnes & Noble for more than 30 years. The bookstore moved about a mile south to Park Shore Plaza. That move left two large inline spaces empty, and Waterside has been dividing and refilling them since.

Anthropologie's move will reshape the east side. Its new 8,500-square-foot store combines part of the old Pottery Barn space with the unit Ann Taylor left, directly across from Love Shack Fancy and next to Vuori. Gulfshore Business reported that its old space at the north end could be split into three new retail units. In its October 8 notice, Waterside said it would share the reopening date later.

These are bigger stores than the ones that left. Dior went from a shop inside Saks to its own 6,000-square-foot boutique, and Anthropologie is moving into a combined suite. Smaller units are being merged or traded among luxury brands, as with Omega and Van Cleef & Arpels. That fits the restaurant strategy: the center is being built for longer visits.

How This Fits the Season Across the Street

The timing works with the arts calendar nearby. Eddie V's sits on Myra Janco Daniels Boulevard, the same road as Artis Naples, which has just started its 2026–27 season. According to WGCU, two exhibitions were scheduled to open at The Baker Museum on October 17. The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams runs through February 14, 2027, and Florida Contemporary 2026–27 runs through June 27, 2027.

The season's biggest dates fall before most of Waterside's new openings. Hamilton plays Artis Naples November 24–25 and 27–29, 2026. WGCU reports that the season also includes Alexander Shelley and the Naples Philharmonic performing all nine Beethoven symphonies over two weeks, with Yo-Yo Ma, Audra McDonald, Itzhak Perlman, Sutton Foster and Kelli O'Hara among the visiting artists. For pre-show dinners this fall, Eddie V's is the one new restaurant open. Bricktop's, True Food Kitchen and California Pizza Kitchen are still there. Buck & Rider's early 2027 target and RH's tentative year-end timing mean the full set of new restaurants will likely arrive in the middle of the season rather than at its start.

For the next few weeks, then, the north end has a construction zone where Brio used to be, the RH campus is still being built on the old Nordstrom site, and Anthropologie's current store is set to close on October 19 for its move. The south end is finished. Eddie V's is serving dinner, Dior and Piranesi face each other, and Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma fill the old bookstore building at the corner of U.S. 41 and Seagate Drive.

Changes like this at Waterside affect what a Pelican Bay address offers week to week, and they are part of the neighborhood context we follow for clients. If you would like to talk about how Pelican Bay and its surroundings are changing this season, Philip Collins is glad to share what we are seeing. Let's Connect.