Why So Many Waterside Shops Stores Are Changing Places This Season

Why does Waterside Shops have construction walls up in November, just as the season starts? The center at Seagate Drive and Tamiami Trail North, at the south end of Pelican Bay, isn't adding a wing. Most of what's new this fall is old space changing hands in sequence. One retailer leaves a storefront, and the next tenant moves into it.

The sequence started with two buildings outside the main row of storefronts. Each move since then has followed from those first two.

Two buildings started it

The first is the footprint of Nordstrom, which closed in 2020. According to Gulfshore Business, Naples-based DeAngelis Diamond is building a Restoration Hardware campus of nearly 30,000 square feet on that site. It is planned as a set of furnishings galleries linked by landscaped walkways to a central RH Naples restaurant in a glass atrium. Waterside lists the project at 5489 Tamiami Trail N with a late 2026 opening.

The second is a two-story outparcel at the northwest corner of U.S. 41 and Seagate Drive. Williams Sonoma moved there from its inline space inside the mall, and Pottery Barn left its own inline space this year to join it. Those two moves opened up two large blocks of inline storefronts, and most of the season's openings come from filling them.

How one vacancy fills the next

1. Williams Sonoma moves out to the outparcel. Dior takes part of its old inline space, plus some smaller units next door, and opens a 6,000-square-foot standalone boutique on June 11. Dior had been a store-within-a-store inside Saks Fifth Avenue.
2. Pottery Barn joins Williams Sonoma. Its old inline space gets split between a 4,000-square-foot Vuori and part of a new 8,500-square-foot Anthropologie.
3. Anthropologie also takes the unit Ann Taylor left. It is moving out of its large store on the mall's northern edge into the new space near Sephora at 5475-1 Tamiami Trail N. The old store closed on Monday, October 19 to get ready for the move.
4. Häagen-Dazs and L'Occitane en Provence close at the end of May. Their two side-by-side units on the mall's eastern edge become one 1,356-square-foot suite for Love Shack Fancy.
5. Omega moves into a temporary space near True Food Kitchen, ahead of a permanent 1,848-square-foot unit near Santa Fe Café in late 2026 or early 2027. Van Cleef & Arpels takes Omega's former 2,519-square-foot space.

A few vacancies filled more directly. Piranesi's fine jewelry store took the 781-square-foot unit across from Dior that Gulf Coast International Properties had left. Peter Millar took the 2,517-square-foot space where White House Black Market used to be.

The square footage shows the direction

The retailers leaving the inline mall or taking separate sites are home furnishings brands that need a lot of floor space: Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and RH's 30,000-square-foot campus. The inline space they left is being divided into smaller fashion and jewelry storefronts. Love Shack Fancy fits in 1,356 square feet, and Piranesi needs only 781.

Anthropologie is the exception, moving into a larger store. Even so, it chose a location near Sephora in the busy center of the mall over the northern edge it is leaving.

Waterside has also announced TWP for early 2027, so the reshuffling isn't over once the holidays pass.

Three new restaurants, three large spaces

Two of the three new restaurants also sit in their own buildings. Eddie V's Prime Seafood, a Darden brand, opened on June 7 in a freestanding 9,991-square-foot building on the southwest corner, at Seagate Drive and Myra Janco Daniels Boulevard. The building used to be a bank office and was extensively renovated. Gulfshore Business describes it as known for seafood flown in from around the world, hand-carved steaks, and live jazz every night in its V Lounge. Waterside's page for the restaurant lists it at 765 Seagate Drive.

On the other side of the mall, Brio Italian Grille's longtime 7,617-square-foot space is behind barricades while it becomes Buck & Rider. Gulfshore Business reports that the restaurant plans a menu built on locally sourced seafood and ingredients, along with carefully chosen international seafood. Waterside's current listing says "coming early 2027."

The third new restaurant is inside the RH project, in the glass atrium at the center of the galleries. It sits on the old Nordstrom footprint, the same site that is drawing RH's furnishings galleries.

What the walls mean for the next few weeks

Because the moves happen in sequence, construction walls will keep going up and coming down through the holidays. Some of the most visible changes have dates attached, and others only have a target season:

• Open now: Eddie V's, Dior, Vuori and Piranesi.
• Moving: Anthropologie, whose new store page says "reopening fall 2026."
• Listed for the holidays or late 2026: Love Shack Fancy, Peter Millar and RH Naples.
• Listed for early 2027: Buck & Rider and TWP.

The center's own calendar for the coming weeks leans toward charity events. Waterside has scheduled a Shop & Share supporting Avow for November 13, 2026. It has also set a Guadalupe Center Toy Drive and Shop & Share for December 11, 2026.

At Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar's team, we keep track of what's opening around Seagate and U.S. 41 because the center sits at the doorstep of Pelican Bay, one of the Naples communities we cover in depth. If you'd like to talk over how the changes at Waterside fit into your own plans, McGreevy and Comisar are glad to help. Let's Connect.