The Summer Shortlist for Vineyards Residents: What Opened Close to Home in 2026

The marquee Naples openings of the year are being held back for late fall. Buck & Rider, RH Restaurant, and Eddie V's Prime Seafood are all pointed at Waterside Shops, and none of them will be pouring a first cocktail before the winter residents return.

That leaves a quieter story for the people who stayed. The commercial node closest to Vineyards, the corner where Airport-Pulling meets Vanderbilt Beach Road, has been filling in all year. If you live inside the gates, the summer of 2026 is the season your neighborhood's front porch got rebuilt, and almost nobody outside the 34119 has noticed.

The corner that became the neighborhood's front porch

Vineyards sits just east of I-75 between Pine Ridge and Vanderbilt Beach roads, which puts the Galleria Shoppes at Vanderbilt, on the northwest corner of Airport-Pulling and Vanderbilt Beach roads, about as close as a commercial center gets without being inside the community itself. That center has been doing something rare in Naples this year: it has been adding tenants faster than it has been losing them.

The two anchor spaces that used to hold The Cave Bistro and Naples Wine Collection are being combined into Ambrosi & Sons, an Italian market and hospitality venue, and the operator has been transparent that the Cave layout works because it pairs retail on one side with a bar and atmosphere on the other, with a launch expected in early 2026. Down the same walkway, The Supper Club is taking the former Tableside space and extending its 1930s-inspired dinner lounge concept, and Aufieri & Martinez Argentinian Steakhouse is preparing to open in a longtime restaurant space.

The lighter, everyday tenants are landing at the same time. Playa Bowls, known for açaí, pitaya and coconut bowls, is taking over the former Nautical Bowls space, and Crazy King Burrito, a casual Mexican counter concept with family recipes and shareable starters like guacamole, elotes and queso dip, recently opened in Suite 100 next to True Fashionistas. A separate build closer to the CVS outparcel will house The Good Pour, a Florida-based wine and spirits retailer opening its sixth location in the new four-unit 1000 Building behind the CVS at Airport-Pulling and Vanderbilt Beach. And a two-story building under construction at the Galleria will add roughly 20 new units for restaurant and retail tenants, which means the corner is not finished.

Put together, that is a wine market, an Italian market, an Argentinian steakhouse, a supper club, a burrito counter, and a bowl shop, all within a five-minute drive of the Vineyards guardhouse, all confirmed or open inside the last twelve months.

What's open now vs. what's making you wait

The pattern is worth sitting with. The polished, national-brand arrivals are being staged for high season. The ones landing within walking distance of a Vineyards driveway are the ones you can actually eat at this week.

Inside the gates, the club used the quiet season too

The most consequential piece of neighborhood news is not on Vanderbilt Beach Road at all. It's inside the 1,400-acre Vineyards Country Club campus, where the Kipp Schulties redesign of the North Course finally started getting national credit. On January 20, 2026, the club announced that the newly renovated North Course had earned recognition from Golf Digest, which follows a full tear-down that included a total rebuild with all new green complexes, recontoured fairways, and TifEagle greens, with Bimini bermudagrass on tees, fairways and rough, refurbished bunkers, and new irrigation and drainage.

For residents who have watched two courses go under the shovel back-to-back, the recognition matters less than the practical shift. Both 18-hole courses are now post-renovation, and the club's own membership terms make summer the friendliest window to actually use them: from May 1 to October 30, Social members get unlimited access to 36 holes of golf upon payment of greens and cart fees, and unlimited access to the practice facilities, compared to the tighter November-through-April rules.

The rest of the club campus is also quietly doing its best work in June, July, and August. The Wellness Center runs a Blue Zones-certified Café V, cardiovascular and strength equipment by Life Fitness, and a physical therapy department operated by Naples Rehabilitative Services, and the spa side of that same 15,000-square-foot building includes a couples spa suite, a private manicure and pedicure boutique, a blow-dry bar, a halotherapy salt room, and a heated outdoor saltwater half-Olympic lap pool. The 2021 clubhouse work also left behind the Acqua pool bar and a new short game practice facility with chipping and putting greens, both of which are far easier to enjoy without a January waitlist.

Championship-caliber greens don't happen by accident, the club noted in a June 2026 post, and the payoff of watching that agronomy work through a slow summer is that the courses playing best right now are the ones inside your own gate.

The summer specials worth crossing Pine Ridge for

If you are willing to drive south of Pine Ridge or west toward the Gulf, the summer 2026 dining scene is running deals it will not repeat in season. A short list, from Naples News Now's June roundup:

• Chops City Grill is offering 25% off entrées and steaks through summer.
• Third Street South restaurants that require weeks of advance booking in January are seeing walk-in availability open up as foot traffic drops, making summer the season to try the places usually fully committed.
• Annie's Bistro, Bar & Bakery inside the Olde Naples Hotel at 200 Broad Street South is open now, evolves through the day from café to full bistro, is open to non-hotel guests, and sits steps from Third Street South.

Two new North Naples restaurants also deserve the drive. Claypot Turkish Restaurant at 4910 Tamiami Trail North opened in late May as a fast-casual concept where everything is made from scratch in actual clay pots, with a Mini Grand Bazaar of imported Turkish goods inside and hours running until 9 or 10 p.m. depending on the night. A few doors down the same corridor, Heyday Cookshop at 4691 Tamiami Trail North on Neapolitan Way is chef Kayla Pfeiffer's second Naples concept, opened in late May by the James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist and Food Network Chopped Champion.

Neither is more than fifteen minutes from a Vineyards gate. Both are the kind of chef-driven, low-marketing openings that will be a lot harder to walk into once high season starts.

What the neighborhood lost, and what it means

The other half of an honest summer roundup is the closures. CAVO Lounge at Mercato closed after 11 years, Skyline Chili closed both Naples and Fort Myers locations after 38 years, Brio Italian Grille at Waterside closed after 20 years, Kunjani Craft Coffee & Gallery on Seagate Drive closed after 10 years, and Häagen-Dazs at Waterside closed May 31 after 25 years. That is a meaningful reshuffling for anyone who has been in Naples more than a decade, and it explains why the Waterside redevelopment matters and why the Vanderbilt corner is quietly moving up in the pecking order of everyday neighborhoods.

For Vineyards residents, the practical read is simple. The closest commercial center to your driveway is expanding, the clubhouse and both golf courses are freshly rebuilt, and the summer months are the only time of year when the front nine, the North Naples chef restaurants, and Third Street South all have open tables on the same weekend. The rest of Naples will notice in November. You have July, August, and September to yourselves.

If you or a neighbor is thinking through what the next chapter looks like at the Vineyards, whether that is right-sizing within a familiar sub-community or moving into a first-floor coach home before the season starts, The Silvers Group is available for a private conversation. Schedule a consultation or ask to join our private listings list.