The Pier Is Still Closed. Lowdermilk Park Just Started Its Own Construction Season.

Walk the north end of Lowdermilk Park on a weekday morning right now and you'll see orange fencing where the old playground used to sit, the one that never came back after Hurricane Ian tore through in September 2022. For four years, that empty patch of grass has been easy to ignore, because everyone's attention was fixed further down the beach, on the Naples Pier, waiting for a rebuild that kept slipping.

Here's what most people walking past haven't put together: the park that quietly absorbed the Pier's foot traffic for four straight years is now under construction at the same time the Pier itself finally has a firm completion date. For a stretch of this fall and winter, neither the backup plan nor the original will be finished. That overlap, not either project on its own, is what actually changes how a Coquina Sands routine works right now.

Four Years Of Standing In For The Pier

Before Ian, the Naples Pier pulled over a million visitors a year, according to the city's own project page. When the storm ripped out roughly 460 feet of the structure and dropped 140 feet of it into the Gulf, along with the concession stand and shelter, the city closed everything but a small approved section in November 2022. What followed wasn't a quick patch job. The city spent 2023 on design contracts and permitting, hit 90 percent design plans by October of that year, and didn't open the project for construction bids until March 2024. Groundbreaking didn't happen until January 5, 2026, more than three years after the storm.

During that entire gap, Lowdermilk Park did the job the Pier used to do. It has five beach entry points, calm shallow water, and a working concession stand, so sunset walkers, families with strollers, and anyone looking for a place to just sit near the Gulf defaulted here. Anyone who's tried to find a parking space near golden hour already knows this without needing a study to confirm it.

What's Actually Under Construction At Lowdermilk Right Now

The park's north end has been sitting empty since the old playground went down in Ian, and this year that finally changes. In mid-June 2026, the Naples City Council took up a $699,787 contract with Playmore West Inc. to install a new playground and, separately, a covered gazebo that had originally been part of a 2025 improvement plan before construction bids came in too high and pushed it back a year. The funding stack behind it is worth knowing: two previously approved park enhancement projects, a $250,000 donation from the Nommensen family, and a proposed additional $250,000 from the city's Beach Fund to close the gap.

That's not the only work happening on the property. A separate $205,000 drainage and sidewalk improvement project, designed by LJA Engineering, went out for bid in March 2026 and targets drainage and walkway upgrades in the park's northeast corner.

Two projects, two different corners of the same park, both landing in the same construction year. If you've noticed fencing shifting around Lowdermilk over the past few months, this is why.

The Pier's Timeline Now Runs Parallel To It

The Naples Pier rebuild is real progress, but it's slower than a lot of residents expected. Construction crews poured their second concrete section on July 9, 2026, six months after the January groundbreaking. The project is expected to run about 18 months from its start, which points to a reopening somewhere around the middle of 2027, not this season and not next winter. The City of Naples Pier Rebuild page confirms the parking lot at 12th Avenue South stays partially usable, with the western third open and the eastern two-thirds fenced off for the work zone, and that pedestrian access points at Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South remain open the entire time as a workaround for beach access.

That's the piece that changes the calculation for Coquina Sands residents this year. The Pier isn't reopening soon enough to relieve pressure on Lowdermilk, and Lowdermilk isn't going to sit finished and idle while everyone waits. Both are mid-project at once, just on different clocks.

What This Actually Means For The Rest Of 2026

None of this requires rerouting your life, but it does change a few habits worth adjusting for the season ahead:

• If you've been counting on the north side of the park for playground access, that area will have active work through at least part of the year while the new structure and gazebo go in. The rest of the park, including the beach itself, stays open.
• The northeast corner near the drainage project may have intermittent walkway closures depending on how the bid timeline plays out after the March award.
• Parking still runs on the automated gate system already in place at the entrance and exit, green when the park is open, red at closing, with a sensor that triggers the exit gate and an 11 p.m. cutoff for all vehicles. That part of the routine hasn't changed and won't during construction.
• If the Lowdermilk lot fills during peak sunset hours, which it has for years now given the Pier closure, the Broad Avenue South and 13th Avenue South beach access points near the Pier remain a legitimate overflow option while pier-adjacent parking stays limited.

None of this is dramatic. It's the kind of adjustment that matters if you're planning an evening walk, not if you're evaluating the neighborhood from the outside. But it's also the kind of detail that gets lost when every write-up about Lowdermilk repeats the same list of amenities without noticing that the park itself has an active before-and-after happening on the ground this year.

The short version: the understudy just went into its own rehearsal. Anyone who assumed Lowdermilk would stay exactly as it's been for the past four years while they waited on the Pier should expect some visible change by the time next season's sunsets roll around, and a full year more, at minimum, before the Pier itself is back.

If you're watching how Coquina Sands changes year over year, whether it's a park rebuild, a pier timeline, or the way a neighborhood's daily rhythm shifts once the temporary becomes permanent, that's the kind of on-the-ground read Michael Dekic tracks closely for clients thinking about this stretch of the Naples coastline. Let's Connect — Start Your Naples Home Search.