Park Shore Plaza Picked Up What Waterside Shops Put Down

Drive north on Tamiami Trail this month and the construction fencing at Waterside Shops tells its own story. Behind it, a glass atrium is rising on the site of the old Nordstrom, built to frame a fine-dining room from Restoration Hardware that's already being called one of the most anticipated openings of the year. A few storefronts over, Buck & Rider is finishing out its first location outside Arizona, and signage for Vuori has gone up next to Sephora. Waterside is building a mall for a special occasion.

A mile south, past the light at Seagate Drive, Park Shore Plaza has been absorbing something else entirely: the errands. This is the part of the story that never got a press release, but it's the one that actually changes what a Park Shore resident's week looks like.

The Anchor That Left, and What It Told the Plaza

For more than thirty years, Barnes & Noble held down a two-story, freestanding building at the northwest corner of Waterside, an original tenant dating back to the mall's earliest days in 1992. When the chain decided to relocate, it didn't downsize the way it had during a recent move within Coconut Point. It moved into the former Big Lots space at 4149 Tamiami Trail North inside Park Shore Plaza and came out the other side with more than 35,000 square feet on a single floor, over 45 percent larger than the store it left behind. Bestselling author Janet Evanovich, a longtime Naples resident, hosted the ribbon-cutting and signed copies of her Stephanie Plum novel "Now or Never," and roughly 200 people lined up to meet her.

None of that was arbitrary. Park Shore Plaza sits along a stretch of Park Shore Drive that one commercial traffic count put at more than 42,000 vehicles a day, and the center drew an estimated 2.6 million visits in 2025 alone. Those aren't the kind of numbers that show up on a for-sale sign, but they're exactly what a national retailer's real estate team runs before deciding a former discount storefront is worth a 35,000-square-foot flagship. The plaza is owned by Brixmor, which recently finished a $20 million renovation and remerchandising push aimed at densifying the property for the trade area around it, where the average household income within three miles tops $230,000. Waterside was shedding a mass-market anchor at the same moment Park Shore Plaza had both the room and the reason to take it.

What Moved In Behind It

The turnover since has been fast enough to notice on a single walk through the parking lot.

• Naples Society Wine Bar opened in a former salon space in January, tucked into the Fresh Market-anchored wing of the plaza, giving the corridor its first dedicated wine-tasting room.
• Juice Society opened its second Southwest Florida location on May 13 at the corner of U.S. 41 and Old Trail Drive, expanding out of its original Coconut Point spot with cold-pressed juices, smoothies and superfood bowls built for a pickleball-and-beach-walk kind of morning.
• TJ Maxx is set to move into the space Saks Off 5th vacated, another sign that the plaza is filling in with names built for a weekly stop rather than a special trip.

Not everything landed. Molcajetes, the Mexican restaurant that had operated in the plaza, closed during the first half of 2026, one of the local closures Naples Press columnist Tim Aten has been tracking around the city this year. A juice bar and a wine room moved into the same stretch that lost a sit-down restaurant, which is its own small data point about what this part of Tamiami Trail is turning into. It's less a place to make a reservation and more a place to duck in for twenty minutes on the way home.

"Look at this place. It's beautiful," Evanovich said at the ribbon-cutting. "People love it."

Two Corridors, Doing Two Different Jobs

Park Shore has always had two commercial edges, and they were never meant to compete with each other. Venetian Village, the open-air collection of restaurants and boutiques along Gulf Shore Boulevard, has been the neighborhood's waterfront front porch for decades. The Village Pub has poured drinks there since 1995. MiraMare Ristorante, M Waterfront Grille, Bayside and T-Michaels still hold the tables that face Venetian Bay at sunset. That corridor was never built for a Tuesday errand. It was built for the evening you dress for.

Park Shore Plaza, a short drive inland, was always the practical counterpart, the place with the grocery store and the big-box anchors. What's changed is how deliberately it's being filled now. The Fresh Market and HomeGoods are still there. So are Burlington, Yard House and Sierra. But the additions since Barnes & Noble arrived read like a plaza that knows exactly which resident it's serving: the one who wants a proper wine flight within walking distance of the grocery store, not a chef's tasting menu with a two-week wait.

Waterside, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction on purpose. The Forbes Co., which owns the mall, has spent this year closing longtime tenants like Ann Taylor, Häagen-Dazs, Chico's and White House Black Market to make room for the RH gallery, Buck & Rider and Anthropologie's relocated flagship. That's not a separate story from the Barnes & Noble move. It's the same decision, seen from the other side. A mall repositioning itself around destination retail and fine dining has less use for a 35,000-square-foot bookstore than a neighborhood plaza does.

What This Actually Changes for the Week

None of this requires a special trip to notice. If your Saturday morning used to start with a Fresh Market run and end with browsing at the old Waterside bookstore, that loop now happens entirely inside Park Shore Plaza, coffee included, since the new Barnes & Noble kept its in-store café. If you've been meaning to try a proper wine flight without driving downtown, Naples Society Wine Bar is closer than it looks from Gulf Shore Boulevard. And if Molcajetes was your go-to for a quick dinner, that particular habit needs a new home, at least for now.

The larger point isn't about any single storefront. It's about what the last year and a half has made clear: Park Shore residents aren't choosing between a mall and a shopping plaza anymore. They're choosing between two corridors that have quietly agreed to stop competing for the same errand, one built for the evening you dress for, the other built for the Tuesday you didn't plan around.

Park Shore keeps rearranging itself in small, useful ways, and most of them never make it past a local column. If you'd like a longtime resident's read on what's changing block by block, or just want to talk through how a neighborhood's daily rhythm shifts over time, Danan Delsing is always glad to compare notes. Let's Connect.