This story is Part One of a three-part series examining how landmark site was redeveloped as the Naples Beach Club—from design and land use to public life and long-term impact.
The ascending driveway of the newly opened Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, makes for a stately arrival, its rise lending the approach a sense of ceremony. The tone eases as you reach the porte-cochère, with its haint-blue ceiling sheltering gas-lit lanterns and twin rows of Adirondack chairs. To those who know this shoreline, the shellcrete foundation registers first—a distinctly Floridian cue and a vivid reminder of the wave-like coquina sign that announced the beloved hotel that stood here for 75 years. Past the lobby, the Gulf appears, and for a moment, the past tucks itself into the present. The blue-green striped awning of HB’s restaurant stands as it did for decades before the former Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club came down in 2022.
Can you revive the soul of a place that holds decades of a community’s memories? This question has shaped Naples’ largest redevelopment in decades. With every demolished landmark, a community fears losing a piece of itself. For four years, as cranes rose over the beachfront, Naples wondered if this one could be different.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
four seasons naples beach club reopening luggage truck
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Photography by Christina Bankson
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The historic hotel wasn’t grand in the way luxury hotels are now. Its charm lived in its sun-worn edges, jalousie shutters and the coconut palms that unified the property, casting a frayed, familiar shade. For locals, it was a commons—a place of standing tee times, first jobs and nightly sunset gatherings. “It had the remarkable ability to invite everyone in and make them feel comfortable, and it held that consistently over 70 years,” says Ellin Goetz, part of the third-generation Watkins family that ran the hotel.
In 2016, the family decided the hotel needed more than they could give it. They faced the complicated task of selling a unicorn site, both coveted and burdened with expectation: 1,000 feet of Gulf frontage; 125 acres, including an 18-hole golf course across the street; and an identity bound by decades of public life. The obvious move would have been to let someone raze it, build condos and lock everything behind gates.
Photography by Christina Bankson
four seasons naples beach club diego angarita
General manager Diego Angarita grew up in his family’s hotel. Born in Colombia and raised in Puerto Vallarta—a resort town on Mexico’s Pacific Coast—he spent his formative years following his father through the property, learning what it takes to make people feel at home. A hospitality degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, led to an internship with Four Seasons, then 20 years working his way up the ranks—from front desk attendant in Punta Mita to hotel manager in Los Angeles, where he led the team to two Forbes five-star ratings. He’s now part of a short line of managers who’ve run this property, each defined by long tenures and deep investment in the community. Jason Parsons, the most recent, served from 2010 until the hotel closed in 2021. Since arriving in Naples, Diego has been doing what the job has always demanded: getting to know the community, understanding that running this property means becoming part of the city’s fabric.
Instead, the Watkinses opted for a buyer with a shared ethos, bypassing richer offers. For Ellin’s husband, Michael Watkins—the hotel’s president and final steward, along with his brother, Henry—having a hotel here was essential. His family had been welcoming locals and travelers for three generations. “Hospitality is the family legacy,” Ellin says.
They chose The Athens Group, the developer behind place-rooted projects like Montage Palmetto Bluff, from more than a dozen suitors. Athens brought in legacy owner BDT & MSD Partners and enlisted Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts to shape the property’s daily life. Whether the group understood what this place meant would show first in what they built.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
four seasons naples beach club hbs sunset bar
When HB’s and the Sunset Bar opened to the public on November 17, more than 200 people crowded the beachfront deck. For the first time since the old hotel closed, they could return to the Gulf-facing stretch where generations had gathered as the light changed. The restaurant and beach bar anchored the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club for decades, and the new team made them the backbone of the property. The spaces are reimagined for modern Naples, but the details ring with familiarity. HB’s sits on its original footprint, with expanded deck dining and oversized umbrellas that keep the space usable in every season. A wine cellar and private dining rooms feel luxurious without flash. Cast-in-place concrete and other storm-ready materials are softened with hardwood furnishings and finishes that look like they could have long been there. The most direct nod: a wide blue-and-green striped awning, echoing HB’s original metal shade, now rendered in a fresh, weather-resistant fabric.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
four seasons naples beach club hbs sunset bar glass polish
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four seasons naples beach club shellcrete doorway
On his first visit, Tim McCarthy of Hart Howerton, the site’s architecture and master planning firm, stood on the thousand-foot stretch of sand and began imagining how daily life would unfold in a new version of a place people already loved. “We were the beneficiaries of 70 years of investment and introspection on the Watkins side,” Tim says.
Authenticity, he knows, is something you earn. You learn a place, absorb its codes, then build so the result feels like a natural extension. His team studied the preserved cottages in the Naples Historic District, excavating the elements that gave Florida its character: deep porches, breezeways, clapboard siding. The difficulty would be scaling those domestic gestures to a large resort without slipping into caricature. “All of a sudden, we were challenged with the opportunity to reinterpret all of those material expressions, but in a seven-story building,” he says.
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Today, shellcrete grounds the structure at base level—the walls engineered to break away in storm surge, allowing waves to wash through toward the golf course rather than deflecting onto neighboring homes. Five stories of rhythmic columns and sleeping porches rise above it. The two upper floors feature deep eaves and standing seam metal roofs—the proportions of a coastal cottage, scaled up.
The campus maintains the old hotel’s relationship to the beach. Despite its height at the center, the building spreads horizontally near the water. HB’s, the pool deck and gathering spaces all hold the low, easy posture that defined the former property. A recognizable palette carries through the shell-studded walls and turquoise striped awnings. From the beach, the hotel rises in a U-shape, stepping down to five stories at the southern edge, in deference to the neighboring homes. The Merchant Room, the resort’s marquee restaurant, projects forward as a pavilion. “It’s made to look like it was added on, perhaps by that next generation that said, ‘There’s a way to get closer to the ocean now,’” Tim explains.
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Photography by Christina Bankson
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four seasons naples beach club shellcrete
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four seasons naples beach club room patio overlook
Inside, the lobby’s pecky cypress ceiling and a bas-relief frieze of native palms set an organic tone. Guest rooms trade the token balcony for a deep veranda with a daybed, backed by louvered panels—echoes of Florida vernacular. More literal cues point you toward the Gulf and Everglades, like the landscape mural in The Merchant Room and the door knockers cast in the form of regional shells, crabs and birds.
Across the street from the beachfront hotel, the inland hub of Market Square holds public restaurants, a spa, and a knockout bowling alley and arcade with four-person Pac-Man. The protected golf course is still being redesigned, and 153 residences are taking shape, spread among eight low-profile buildings. To unify it all, the team did what Ellin, a revered landscape architect, had done for decades: planted coconut palms as the throughline. The Coconut Connector—Tim’s name for the palm-lined path from golf course to beach— lands at the site’s grounding points.
The Naples Beach Hotel’s heartbeat always ran through HB’s and Sunset Bar—sister spots on the sand where the town converged. Restoring them meant giving locals a familiar point of return.
Photography by Christina Bankson
four seasons naples beach club palm tree mural
Legacy is carried here through detail, not declaration. Florida vernacular, a style informed by climate and local materials, carries throughout the property. Materials, colors, finishes and murals nod to coastal aesthetics without tourist iconography. The effect is subtle and refined, with familiar notes. Outside, a frangible shellcrete wall offers a note that’s both practical and commemorative. It’s engineered to wash through safely during storms and reminiscent of the wave-like sign that long introduced the Naples Beach Hotel. Inside, guest rooms open to broad terraces, their ceilings washed in Southern haint blue and their Chippendale-style railings lending a historic elegance to a facade conceived as a scaled-up interpretation of Old Naples’ preserved cottages.
Before the sale closed, the Watkinses and Athens secured approval to rebuild and modestly expand HB’s in its original location. Without this, any future restaurant would have been pushed further back from the water and elevated. Beachfront dining was guaranteed. Recreating HB’s and Sunset Bar, specifically, was a choice. The team recognized them as the property’s emotional anchors and knew fidelity couldn’t hinge on the name alone. The magic of the old places lived in the details: the curves, the relationship between bar and seating, the flow from covered space to deck to sand. So, here, the design took a more literal form, recreating the core gestures in the same place, refined for code, climate and how Naples lives now.
HB’s deck is larger now, its umbrellas wide enough to extend alfresco dining into peak sun. A temperature-controlled wine cellar and private dining room add polish without interrupting the casual drift between beach and bar. To keep the restaurant on the sand required dry floodproofing, a costlier approach than raising the structure. Stucco walls, detailed to resemble clapboard, are designed to withstand hours of wave pressure. “Essentially, the building acts like a bathtub,” Tim says. When the storm passes and the sand settles, the community has a place to return. Sunset Bar keeps its easygoing nature, too. Woven chairs, string lights and the lacquered old-pine bar—rebuilt in its brilliant crescent shape—draw strangers into conversation and frame the Gulf.
The menus have evolved more sharply. HB’s shifted from classic surf-and-turf to brighter, crudo-forward coastal cooking; Sunset Bar leaned into Latin flavors. But the spirit remains. On opening night, more than 200 people filled the waterfront decks, the bar backlit by the day’s final blaze, little lights glowing as night settled in. Voices rose and fell with the Gulf breeze—the first test of whether memory and architecture could harmonize.
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
Photography by Christina Bankson
In mid-November, seven years after the initial agreement was struck, Ellin and her son, Rhys Watkins, joined the small crowd gathered on The Merchant Room’s terrace for the resort’s ribbon-cutting. The family is clear-eyed about loss and generous about progress. “People forget there has always been change,” Ellin says, recalling how the family reshaped the coastal enclave over the years. She still hears from people who say they miss the old hotel and tells them the same thing: Keep the memories, then go enjoy what’s there now. “Once people experience it, I think they will recognize that it still has aspects of what they miss.”
But the soul of a place can’t be measured on opening day. The Naples Beach Hotel was beloved because it held decades of people’s lives. No team—no matter how aligned—can fabricate that. For now, Naples has its beach back and a setting shaped by what stood before and the coast it answers to today. In the next installments of this series, we’ll continue the story. Part 2 looks at the people behind the project and how the community shaped what emerged. Part 3 returns to see what’s taken root.
Photography by Christina Bankson