Drive north on Goodlette-Frank from Grey Oaks toward Waterside Shops at 5415 Tamiami Trail North, and the first thing you notice these days isn't the Saks Fifth Avenue sign. It's the construction wall running the length of what used to be Nordstrom, and the steady hum of equipment behind it. Most people driving past assume it's a routine renovation. It isn't. It's the biggest capital project this shopping center has taken on since The Forbes Company acquired the property in the early 2000s, and the closures that made room for it tell a more interesting story than the phrase "new stores coming soon" usually does.
Three tenants left Waterside Shops over the past six years for three unrelated reasons. What replaced them follows one consistent idea.
The Three Vacancies That Started It
Nordstrom closed its Naples location in 2020, part of a 16-store round of national closures the chain announced that year. Barnes & Noble pulled out in July 2024, retreating from mall-based stores during a corporate restructuring. Brio Tuscan Grille, which had occupied the same address at Waterside for close to two decades, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025.
None of these were forced exits. They were three separate businesses whose formats stopped working, in three separate industries, at three separate points in time. What's notable is what The Forbes Company, which has owned Waterside Shops since the early 2000s, chose to do with the resulting square footage. Rather than backfill with comparable tenants, each vacancy became the site for a concept that has no direct equivalent anywhere else in Southwest Florida right now.
What's Already Open
Two of those concepts are already operating. Eddie V's Prime Seafood, the fine-dining seafood brand from Darden Restaurants known for live jazz and an extensive wine list, opened this summer as one of several dining additions anchoring the property. It's Darden's first Southwest Florida location, and diners here have historically made the drive to Fort Lauderdale or Tampa to find it. Dior also opened, moving out of its former store-within-Saks arrangement into its own standalone boutique.
For a Grey Oaks resident who's made that Eddie V's drive before, that's the practical change: it just got a lot shorter.
The Bigger Bet: RH Naples On The Old Nordstrom Site
The Nordstrom footprint is where the larger story is playing out. RH, the home furnishings company formerly known as Restoration Hardware, is building out roughly 29,382 square feet on that site into six connected galleries linked by skylights and landscaped, glass-roofed walkways, centered on a full-service restaurant and wine bar beneath a glass atrium. Local contractor DeAngelis Diamond is handling construction, with county permits issued in August 2025. No official opening date has been confirmed, but the timeline points to late 2026.
It's a different kind of project than the store it replaces. Nordstrom was a department store selling several categories under one roof. RH Naples is being built as a destination in itself, closer in concept to a small architectural attraction than a shop you run into for a gift.
The former Barnes & Noble building followed a similar upgrade pattern on a smaller scale. It's now a two-story structure housing Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn, both of which relocated out of smaller inline spaces they'd occupied for years. Williams Sonoma closed its original Waterside location in January 2025 specifically to make the move.
What's Opening, And When
Here's how the rest of the year lines up, based on the current construction and leasing activity at the property.
| Space | What's Moving In | Expected Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Former White House Black Market (2,517 sq ft) | Peter Millar (sportswear and golf apparel) | Announced, opening date pending |
| 781 sq ft unit across from Dior, formerly Gulf Coast International Properties | Piranesi (fine jewelry) | This fall |
| Current Anthropologie space | Anthropologie, larger format | This fall |
| New unit | Vuori (athletic apparel) | This fall |
| Current Omega space (2,519 sq ft) | Van Cleef & Arpels | After Omega relocates |
| New 1,848 sq ft unit near Santa Fe Café | Omega | Late 2026 or early 2027 |
| Former Nordstrom (roughly 29,000 sq ft) | RH Naples | Targeted late 2026 |
Two of these moves are worth pausing on because they show how deliberate the sequencing is. Omega isn't leaving Waterside, it's trading its current 2,519-square-foot space for a smaller 1,848-square-foot unit near Santa Fe Café, and Van Cleef & Arpels is taking the space Omega vacates. That's not a tenant loss. It's a swap that upgrades the jewelry and watch corridor for both brands at once.
Why This Matters If You Already Live Nearby
If you're evaluating Waterside Shops from the outside, the headline is "luxury mall gets a facelift." If you already live near Grey Oaks and treat this shopping center as your regular Saturday stop, the more useful framing is different: several of these brands weren't previously an option in this market at all. Buck & Rider, a seafood concept from Hi Noon Hospitality with an open kitchen and indoor-outdoor layout, is arriving in Naples before it exists in most other East Coast markets, not as a later addition to an existing rollout.
That's the piece that's easy to miss walking past the construction wall. This isn't a mall refilling empty space with whatever tenant answered the call first. It's three unrelated closures resolving into one coordinated bet that Naples can support the kind of retail and dining concepts residents have historically had to travel for.
For the rest of 2026, expect the property to feel unfinished in places. The atrium framing around RH Naples will be visible from Tamiami Trail through the fall. Anthropologie and Vuori should have their new storefronts open before the holidays. Piranesi's fine jewelry space should follow on a similar timeline. The Omega and Van Cleef swap, and the RH restaurant and wine bar under the glass atrium, are the pieces that carry into 2027.
None of it changes what Waterside Shops has always been for people living nearby: the closest place to grab dinner without much planning, the spot for a gift when you're short on time, the parking lot you already know by heart. What's changing is the ceiling on what that closest option can be. A year from now, at least one of the reasons Grey Oaks residents used to drive out of the region for dinner will have moved down the street instead.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing a move in or out of the area, that's a longer conversation, and one worth having with someone who watches this market closely. Amy Nease works with buyers and sellers throughout Grey Oaks and the surrounding Naples communities and can walk you through how neighborhood-level changes like this one tend to play out over time. Request a private consultation to talk through what you're seeing.
