At the end of 12th Avenue South, the pile driver has gone quiet. On October 7, Shoreline Foundation Inc. drove the last of the 193 reinforced-concrete pilings the new Naples Pier needs. What stands in the Gulf now is a row of concrete bents running out from the beach, with crews and barges working along it. It looks unfinished because it is. It also changes more from week to week than at any point since Hurricane Ian.
The Naples Daily News calls this coming winter the fourth season without the pier. It adds that beachgoers will have "a pretty good view" of the new structure coming together through the rest of the year and into the winter months. That timing is the story of this season. The City is targeting a July 2027 reopening. The pier gets built during high season and opens in the middle of summer. Anyone in Naples from November through April will see the whole build from the sand and none of the walk.
The Loud Part Is Done
The pilings were the noisy stage. In August, the Naples Daily News ran video of the pile driver at work and described the "banging and clanging" from one end of the pier. That stage ended in early October, before most seasonal residents arrived.
The work now is concrete, and it is already well along. The full rebuild needs about 602 cubic yards. The first pour for the bents went in on June 26. The mid-pavilion pour on September 18 put the project past the halfway mark. The City credits a calm summer for keeping the work on pace. It says electrical work, foundation improvements and renovations to the bathrooms and storage areas are all underway alongside the pours.
Weather is the other reason the schedule has held. On June 17, crews began building a trestle, a bridge-like work walkway, along the south side of the pier. With the trestle in place, work can keep going even when the offshore barges have to take shelter. A winter cold front no longer has to shut the site down.
What You'll See Change From the Beach
The City's sequence is simple. Concrete comes first. Wood goes down only after every pour is finished. The table below shows where each stage stood in late October 2026, based on the City of Naples project page.
| Stage | Status as of late October 2026 | What it looks like from the sand |
|---|---|---|
| Pilings | All 193 driven, finished October 7, 2026 | The full length of the pier is set out in the water |
| Concrete bents and caps | Past 50 percent of roughly 602 cubic yards | Gray structure filling in along the pilings |
| South-side trestle | Built starting June 17, 2026 | A work walkway beside the main structure |
| Structural work | Expected complete in early 2027 | The concrete frame looks finished |
| Ipe wood decking | About two-thirds delivered by July 24, 2026; goes down after the concrete | The structure starts to look like a pier again |
| Reopening | July 2027 target | Public access returns |
The decking is the stage residents will notice most. Ipe, pronounced "ee-pay," is a tropical hardwood the City chose because it holds up and resists rot. Most of it was already on site by midsummer, waiting for the concrete to be finished. Shoreline Foundation expects to wrap up structural work in early 2027 and start the decking after that. On that schedule, the pier goes from concrete frame to finished deck during the busiest months of the season. Season residents who walk to the 13th Avenue South beach end in January and come back in April will likely see two different structures.
Getting to the Water Until July
The closure covers more than the pier deck. The City has closed the pier, its stairs, restrooms and showers, and 12th Avenue South west of Gulf Shore Boulevard South for the length of the project. Here is what stays open:
- The Broad Avenue South beach end. This is one of two pedestrian bypasses, and it has restrooms.
- The 13th Avenue South beach end. This is the second bypass, also with restrooms, and the closest open access south of the work zone.
- The western third of the pier lot. The lot at 12th Avenue South and Gulf Shore Boulevard South still has some public parking on its western third. The eastern two-thirds is closed for construction.
The City says both bypasses will stay open for the whole project. With two-thirds of the lot taken up by construction during the months when the beach is busiest, that small row of open spaces fills fast. Arriving on foot or by bike from Old Naples is the simplest way to reach either beach end.
Why the New Pier Sits Higher
The reason for the long, heavy build traces back to September 28, 2022. Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa as a Category 4 storm, about 104 miles from Naples. It still knocked about 140 feet of the pier into the Gulf, including the end shelter and more than 30 pilings, and gutted the concession area and midpoint shelter. City engineers decided the whole structure had to be replaced.
The new design answers that damage point by point. The pilings are 18 inches square, up from 14, which the City calls a 65 percent increase. The new piles are 70, 85 and 100 feet long, and every one is longer than the longest pile in the old pier. That extra capacity let engineers raise the pier three feet higher above the water. The new pier also uses nearly three times as much poured concrete, so the concrete portion is more likely to survive a severe hurricane. The design also uses fewer piles, spaced farther apart, to reduce impacts on the shoreline and limit erosion.
Some history explains the effort. The pier has been part of Naples since 1888 and draws more than one million visitors a year. It was rebuilt after storms in 1910, 1926, 1944 and 1960, renovated in 2015, damaged by Irma in 2017 and then wrecked by Ian. The City's timeline shows how long the paperwork took before any of the visible work began. The construction contract went to Shoreline Foundation for $23.5 million on October 2, 2024. Final Army Corps approval came on October 10, 2025, FEMA obligated funding on December 12, 2025, and construction started January 6, 2026.
A Different Mid-Pier
The new pier will not have the snack stop that many longtime residents remember. The City says state and federal rules prohibited rebuilding the old mid-pier concession area. After reviewing options, City Council chose portable food and beverage carts at the mid-pavilion, an approach the City describes as serving visitors while respecting neighboring residents and businesses. Council also approved a small Naples Police and Beach Patrol substation on the pier.
"The Naples Pier remains on schedule to reopen in July 2027."
That line comes from the City's project page. The City has not announced a start date for the carts.
Where the Old Pier Went
The pier most people knew is now about 10 miles off Gordon Pass. On April 24, 2026, the City, Shoreline Foundation and the marine engineers at Turrell, Hall & Associates sank 59 of the old concrete pilings at the Wasmer Reef site. WINK News reported that the City turned more than 300 tons of demolished concrete into reef instead of sending it to a landfill. It is the eighth reef built at the Wasmer site.
Wasmer Reef was first established in 2015 with BP oil spill grants and private donations. WINK reports it now supports corals, aquatic vegetation, invertebrates, bivalves and tunicates that give shelter and food to young and adult fish. Collier County's reef location inventory lists the Naples Pier Reef in 40 feet of water with 15 feet of relief, at 26° 2.029' N, 81° 58.585' W. The County's Artificial Reef Program, run by Coastal Zone Management, describes its reefs as habitat for recreational and charter fishing and for diving. Pilings that did not go to the reef were sent to a recycling facility to become concrete aggregate for road construction.
So for boaters, the old pier is reachable this season. The new one is still a work site seen from the 13th Avenue South beach end, with its first public walk set for July 2027, while most seasonal owners are out of town.
If you own near the pier, or you are thinking about a home within walking distance of 12th Avenue South for the year it reopens, Luxury by Chad Long can show you how this stretch of Old Naples is changing as the work moves along. Request a Complimentary Home Valuation or Private Consultation, and we'll walk the beach ends with you this season.
