What the Naples Grande Water Park Withdrawal Actually Means for Pelican Bay

"If this happens, what's going to stop the Ritz-Carlton? What's going to stop the Inn on Pelican Bay?"

Ken Silverman asked that question at a packed information session on the proposed Clam Pass Cove development, back when this fight was still front-page news inside Pelican Bay. Silverman is president of the Pelican Bay Property Owners Association, and his question was less about one hotel's pool plans than about precedent. If Naples Grande Beach Resort can turn seven tennis courts into water slides and a lazy river, what stops the next commercial neighbor from doing the same.

That question still doesn't have a clean answer. But something did change this spring, and the version of the story now circulating on porches and in elevator conversations, that the project is dead and the fight is over, isn't quite right.

What Actually Happened in May

According to an update from the Park Shore Association, Collier County staff told the attorney representing Bay Villas that Naples Grande had withdrawn its Site Development Plan Amendment for Clam Pass Cove. The withdrawal lets the hotel move ahead with a remodel of its guest rooms and other upgrades that had been bundled with the water park proposal. It does not resolve the underlying dispute. The appeals filed against the county's official interpretations, the legal documents that determine whether Clam Pass Cove needs a full Planned Unit Development amendment in the first place, are still active. Both Bay Villas and the Pelican Bay Foundation filed those appeals, and per the same update, the hotel may reconsider the project once those appeals are decided.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Withdrawing a construction plan and dropping a legal argument are two different things, and Naples Grande did only the first.

The Question That Was Never Withdrawn

The fight over Clam Pass Cove has always turned on one word: accessory. Collier County's Planning and Zoning Division determined that a water park on the hotel's grounds counts as a customary accessory use, meaning the project could proceed without the public hearings and approval safeguards that come with a formal PUD amendment. Planning and Zoning Director Mike Bosi upheld that position in a March 20, 2026 interpretation, rejecting arguments from opponents that the plan violated setback, open space, and compatibility standards written into Pelican Bay's founding PUD.

Bay Villas and the Pelican Bay Foundation disagree, and their appeals argue that a 3.3-acre development with water slides, a lazy river, and a splash pool is not a modest hotel amenity but a substantial change in land use that deserves the same scrutiny any new commercial project would get. As of an April 22, 2026 update from the Gulf Shore Association of Condominiums, both appeals were still awaiting hearing dates, and it wasn't yet clear whether they would go before the Hearing Examiner, the Board of County Commissioners sitting as the Board of Zoning Appeals, or both. The county's next public word on the matter, the May 30 confirmation that the site plan had been withdrawn, said only that the appeals continue. No hearing date has been reported since. Confusion over the exact procedural path caused real frustration in the room at the March 24, 2026 commissioners meeting, when Commissioner Chris Hall tried to explain that the appeal wouldn't come to commissioners in their normal role but as a separate zoning appeals body. Nearly 100 residents from the neighborhoods around Naples Grande showed up that day. The room's response to Hall's explanation was a flat no.

A Timeline Worth Keeping Straight

Who Is Actually Doing the Fighting

The opposition isn't one group, it's several, each with its own territory and its own legal bills. Bay Villas sits directly across Crayton Road from the resort and has carried the heaviest financial load, spending roughly $100,000 in legal and professional fees by late March 2026, according to reporting from the Gulf Shore Association of Condominiums. The Seagate Property Owners Association, led by president Patrick Wack, helped organize the broader No Waterpark Coalition, which Wack has described as an alliance of more than 10,000 residents. By early April, Wack said the coalition had collected nearly 5,000 signatures and raised close to $150,000 to fund the fight. The Pelican Bay Foundation, the master homeowners association for the entire PUD, held back from filing its own appeal until April 17, a filing opponents described as a significant boost to their case given the Foundation's authority over what happens inside Pelican Bay's boundaries.

The line between the hotel and its neighbors got personal at times, particularly over language. Wack pushed back hard on the hotel's decision to describe the project as a pool amenity rather than a water park, telling reporters, "when Joe Public buys a day pass, he's not going to say to the kids, oh, we're going to the Naples Grande water amenity. They're going to the water park." The hotel's design team did make some concessions along the way, including a grease containment system to reduce cooking odors from a planned cafe and Acoustiblok sound-dampening material for a six-foot wall meant to buffer noise from slides estimated at 21 to 25 feet tall. Whether those concessions matter is now beside the point if the appeals succeed in forcing a full PUD amendment process, which would put the design back on the table entirely.

A Complication From Tallahassee

There's one more piece of this that hasn't gotten much attention inside Pelican Bay, and it could outweigh everything happening at the county level. Around the same time the local appeals were being filed, a new state law took effect that limits the ability of cities and counties to block water park rezoning at what the law terms destination resort hotels, treating them as accessory uses by default. The county's own interpretation already leaned on a "destination resort hotel" classification for Naples Grande, a term opponents point out doesn't actually appear anywhere in the Pelican Bay PUD. If that state-level classification holds, it could undercut the local appeals regardless of how the Hearing Examiner or Board of Zoning Appeals eventually rules. Nobody involved in the fight, on either side, has fully sorted out what that law means for Clam Pass Cove yet.

What to Actually Watch For

The next real signal will be a hearing date for the appeals, not a construction crew showing up at the tennis courts. If the appeals succeed, Naples Grande would need to go through a full PUD amendment, meaning new public hearings, a review by the Pelican Bay Design Review Board, and ultimately a decision by the Pelican Bay Foundation board before any water slide gets built. If the appeals fail, the county's original interpretation stands, and the hotel could revive its site plan largely as designed, subject to whatever it worked out with the county on setbacks and access. Either way, the withdrawal in May bought time, not resolution.

For residents on the south end of Pelican Bay, particularly in Bay Villas, Tierra Mar, and Bridge-Way Villas, the practical question isn't whether Clam Pass Cove opens next season. It's whether the accessory use interpretation that made this whole fight possible gets overturned, upheld, or made irrelevant by state law before Naples Grande decides to refile.

The Silvers Group keeps a close eye on zoning and land use questions across the neighborhoods we work in, including Pelican Bay, because these are the details that shape daily life long before they show up in a listing description. If you want a plain conversation about what's happening in a specific corner of the neighborhood, or you're weighing a move here and want context that goes beyond the median price, reach out to The Silvers Group to schedule a consultation.