What's Actually Changing at Waterside Shops Before Season 2026-27

If you live in Pelican Bay, Waterside Shops is less a destination than an errand. You walk over for a coffee, a Saks pickup, a quick dinner before the symphony. Which is why the current construction is worth understanding in detail: the property you will step onto in November looks materially different from the one you left in April, and the finished picture arriving late this year is different again.

The short version is that a shopping center anchored by one department store and a modest dining roster is finishing a rebuild into something closer to a compact luxury district. The open-air center is 290,000 square feet and carries an A++ classification, the highest assigned in the Florida market, and the tenant compression underway makes that classification easier to see on foot than it used to be.

The Baseline: Where Things Stood a Year Ago

At the start of 2025, Waterside had one signature sit-down seafood restaurant, a casual Italian chain in bankruptcy, a Dior counter tucked inside Saks, and a large dark box where Nordstrom had been since 2020. The former Nordstrom building, 74,591 square feet, had been vacant since 2020. The Barnes & Noble and the US Bank next to it had also been demolished. For residents who use the center as a village square, the roster felt thinner than the architecture suggested it should.

That is the reference point worth keeping in mind while reading the rest of this.

What Has Already Opened This Summer

Two changes have landed since spring, and both are the kind you notice on a normal weekday walk-through.

The first is Dior. Dior opened a standalone boutique at Waterside on June 11, relocating from its former store-within-a-store location inside Saks Fifth Avenue to a 6,000-square-foot suite that creates more visibility for its luxury fashion, accessories, fragrance and beauty lines. The practical difference for a Pelican Bay resident is that beauty and fragrance are now browsable without walking the length of Saks' cosmetics floor.

The second is a small hospitality gesture rather than a tenant. Through July and August 2026, the center is running a seasonal guest appreciation program called "The Squeeze," with complimentary lemonade offered Fridays and Saturdays. Worth knowing if you have grandkids visiting during the shoulder months.

The Fall Cluster

The next wave lands between now and the holidays, and it is heavier on retail than dining.

• Hermès. Hermès has returned to Waterside after a nine-year absence, occupying a freestanding store with a tropical-inspired pavilion. For anyone who has been driving to Bal Harbour or ordering online, this closes the last real gap in the center's leather and silk category.
• Brunello Cucinelli. A Brunello Cucinelli boutique is replacing the former Williams Sonoma space inside the mall, with buildout that began this summer after construction documents were approved on July 28.
• Peter Millar. Peter Millar is opening in the former White House Black Market space, bringing premium sportswear and golf apparel. Given the golf density in and around Pelican Bay, this is a more practical addition than it looks on paper.
• Vuori. The California-based athletic apparel brand plans to open this fall.
• Anthropologie. Anthropologie is relocating within Waterside into a larger storefront expected to open this fall.
• Piranesi. Piranesi is opening its fine jewelry store this fall.
• Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma. The two brands will share a two-story outparcel on the site of the former Barnes & Noble.

Read together, the fall list confirms what the leasing plan has been quietly telegraphing since permits went in last summer: the center is moving from a Saks-plus-inline-shops model to a set of standalone brand houses with their own frontage.

The Late-2026 Dining Turn

The change with the largest effect on a resident's week is the dining rebuild. Three new sit-down restaurants are arriving in the same twelve months.

Eddie V's. Waterside has confirmed Eddie V's for a summer 2026 opening at 765 Seagate Drive. The brand, known for live jazz and a serious wine program, historically draws customers who have made the drive to Fort Lauderdale or Tampa to find it; Darden has confirmed the Naples location as its first in the region.

Buck & Rider. The seafood-driven concept from Scottsdale is expanding outside the Southwest for the first time, slated for a late 2026 opening at Waterside. The Naples location is designed with an open kitchen, expansive raw bar, and indoor-outdoor seating. The architecture is led by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture with Naples-based MHK Architecture providing local vision.

RH Naples. This is the largest single project on the property and the one that most changes the feel of the north end. The one-story, 29,382-square-foot retail space will include six separate galleries with skylights connected by landscaped courtyards, glass-roofed walkways and outdoor seating spaces with fountains and palm trees. Six separate galleries connect through landscaped courtyards and glass-roofed walkways, surrounding a central 4,143-square-foot, full-service restaurant and wine bar beneath an elongated glass atrium. The total footprint is 29,382 square feet. The 174-seat format beneath the glass atrium, with wine service threaded through the experience, is closer to the European model of a gallery restaurant than anything currently on the Waterside roster; it is projected to open near the end of 2026.

The through-line is easy to miss when the announcements land one at a time. Read together, they describe a single strategy.

By the end of 2026, Waterside will have Eddie V's, Buck & Rider, and the RH restaurant, three concepts with no overlap in price point, format, or menu identity.

For a resident who currently rotates between two rooms and drives out to Mercato or Venetian Village on the third night, that math changes the calculus of eating close to home.

What This Means for a Pelican Bay Household

A few practical observations, since the news itself has been well covered elsewhere and residents can be forgiven for tuning out another opening-date article.

Traffic patterns will shift before the RH opening. The north end of the property has been effectively dormant since Nordstrom closed. A 29,382-square-foot destination with a 174-seat restaurant will pull cars and foot traffic toward the Seagate Drive edge in a way the site plan has not seen in five years. If you currently park on the north side because it is quiet, that window is closing.

The dining reservations arithmetic gets easier, not harder. Three new rooms with different price points means Saturday nights during season stop concentrating into the same two dining rooms. That is a small quality-of-life improvement that compounds over a full winter.

Category coverage is finally complete on the retail side. With Hermès back, Dior standalone, Brunello Cucinelli inline, and Piranesi adding fine jewelry, the reason to drive to Bal Harbour or Palm Beach for a specific brand is narrower than it has been in a decade.

The character of the center is compressing, not expanding. The 290,000 square feet is not growing. What is happening is that inline suites are being consolidated, department-store departments are being spun into standalone flagships, and the ratio of brand houses to generic tenants is tilting. High-volume spaces are being systematically split to introduce modern inline suites, allowing prominent brands to transition out of older department store departments into visible, standalone storefronts.

A Quick Timeline to Keep in Your Notes

If you cross-reference this against your own routine, the takeaway for most Pelican Bay households is that the version of Waterside you will use next season is not the version you used last season. The construction fencing on the north end and the paper on the inline windows both come down inside a compressed window, and the tenant mix that emerges is denser at the top of the luxury tier than at any point in the center's history.

For residents thinking about what this means for their home, their guest routines, or a future move within the neighborhood, a private conversation is usually more useful than a public post. When you are ready, White Horse Group is here to begin your bespoke experience.