Turn out of Kelly Greens toward the water and you have a choice most articles about Fort Myers Beach never mention. Head south on Summerlin toward the Sanibel Causeway and you're on the boater's side of the island, the working docks and bay-side dining rooms clustered around Old San Carlos Boulevard and San Carlos Island. Keep going past that turn and you eventually land in Times Square, the beachfront strip with the missing pier and the vacant lots that anchor every "Fort Myers Beach is still rebuilding" headline written in the last two years.
Those headlines aren't wrong. They're just describing a different five minutes than the one most Kelly Greens residents actually drive.
The Side of the Island That Already Came Back
Kelly Greens sits between the McGregor Boulevard corridor and Summerlin Road near San Carlos Boulevard, close enough to the Sanibel Causeway entrance and the boat launches along Estero Bay that the club's own materials describe the location as roughly midway between Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach. That geography matters because the San Carlos Boulevard side of the island took a different path back from Hurricane Ian than Times Square did.
Nervous Nellie's, the waterfront restaurant on Old San Carlos Boulevard that's been serving grouper tacos and stone crab claws since 1991, never stopped being the table locals point to when out-of-town guests ask where to eat. Pinchers, the family seafood chain a few doors down, has kept the fresh fish market model running the same way it did before the storm. And in May, one of the more emotional milestones of the whole rebuild landed just off that same stretch: Mariner's Boathouse Fort Myers Beach reopened on May 5, 2026, a return that longtime regulars had been waiting years for.
None of that is Times Square. It's the bay side, the boat side, the side you actually reach first.
The Marina Side Is Where the Money Is Actually Moving
If you want a read on where investment is concentrating along San Carlos Boulevard right now, look at the marinas rather than the storefronts.
Joe's Dockside Marina, at 18400 San Carlos Boulevard just before the Matanzas Pass Bridge, is planning a major redevelopment that will expand the property into a larger waterfront destination built around boating and entertainment. The site formerly operated as Getaway Marina and has long served as a gateway for fishing charters and boat rentals headed toward Estero Island. The owner leading the project, May, has been explicit about wanting the expansion to preserve rather than sanitize the working-waterfront feel, describing the goal as keeping the marina "a living, breathing entity."
May has already brought in local stone crabbers to keep that authenticity intact rather than replace it with something generic.
A few minutes away, Tiki Pub opened a new Fort Myers Beach location that runs boat tours out of docks behind Bayside Veterans Park, with pickup and parking available at Excursions Marina right off San Carlos Boulevard. The boats range from a six-passenger model with a water slide to a 28-person party boat, and the lineup now includes everything from 8:30 a.m. coffee cruises to sunset runs. It's a small addition, but it's the kind of thing that tells you the boating economy on this side of the island isn't just surviving, it's expanding.
What's Still Genuinely Under Construction, and Why It's Not Your Problem
Here's where the contrast actually lands. Times Square, the beachfront commercial core about a mile further down the island, is on a slower and more visible timeline, and that's the part of the rebuild that keeps making the news.
In December, the Fort Myers Beach Town Council approved a three-story mixed-use building to replace the Kilwins shop that Hurricane Ian destroyed, a project meant to help spur redevelopment along Old San Carlos Boulevard and a proposed bayfront plaza into what planners describe as a connected Main Street. Construction was expected to start this past summer, with an opening targeted for early 2027, and the ground floor will house an open-air ice cream shop called Meli's Ice Cream, run by the same family that will live above it. It's a meaningful project. It's also more than a year from opening.
The Fort Myers Beach Pier tells a similar story. The original 560-foot pier stood since 1991 before Ian tore it away, and this year the project finally moved from planning to an actual signed construction contract, with a build that's expected to begin in late 2026 and wrap in 2027. When it's finished, the new pier will stretch 1,000 feet, about 70% longer than the original, with shade structures and fish cleaning stations built in from the start. That's genuinely exciting news for the island. It's just not news about the corner Kelly Greens residents actually use on a Tuesday night.
That's the piece worth sitting with. The rebuild narrative you read in regional coverage is almost entirely a Times Square narrative, because that's where the visible gaps and the biggest construction contracts are. The San Carlos Boulevard side, the side closer to Kelly Greens, largely finished its version of this story already.
What's Actually on the Calendar Between Now and Halloween
Beyond the restaurants and marinas, the event calendar on this side of the island has filled back in this year in a way it hadn't since before the storm.
- Sol Tequila, the reopening of the longtime Mr. Tequila spot at the Key Estero plaza under the same ownership, is targeting a September 2026 opening. Same family, same location, new name on the sign.
- Island Charm Crawl runs May through October, a collectible summer-long crawl that's become one of the more talked-about local traditions, with a completion charm and closing celebration for anyone who finishes it before the month ends.
- Cars & Coffee at Santini Marina Plaza happens monthly, drawing classic and specialty cars with rotating car clubs in a relaxed morning setting.
- Sunset Sound Bath, part of the Island Zen series, offers guided crystal bowl sessions timed to the waves. Bring a towel or a mat.
None of this required Times Square to be finished. It required the boating side of the island, the side five minutes from your gate, to get its footing back, and that's exactly what happened this year.
The Takeaway for Anyone Who Actually Lives Here
If you've been holding off on treating Fort Myers Beach as "back" because the pier isn't finished or Times Square still has vacant lots, that hesitation is aimed at the wrong stretch of road. The boulevard you actually drive down from Kelly Greens, the one with Nervous Nellie's, Pinchers, the newly reopened Mariner's Boathouse, and a marina scene that's actively expanding, has been functioning like a normal neighborhood for a while now. The slower rebuild is happening a mile away, on a different beach.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own place inside Kelly Greens, whether that's understanding how the area's recovery has shaped buyer interest or just getting a clearer read on where things stand, Ryan Batey and the Batey Westerlund Team track this corridor closely and are glad to talk through what they're seeing on the ground.
