If executives at Collier Enterprises get their wish, a handful of new restaurants will open in East Naples starting next year.
Collier County commissioners have approved the plat for a 12-acre tract at the southeast corner of the intersection of U.S. 41 East and Thomasson Drive.
Collier Enterprises’ Collier Land Development Inc. owns the land. The company has yet to record the plat with the county, but has begun work to turn the land into the second phase of the Shops at Hammock Cove.
“We’re currently building the infrastructure,” said Patrick Utter, vice president of real estate at Collier Enterprises. “The roadway, a turn lane and some utilities.”
Culver’s, a Wisconsin-based burger chain with one area location on Airport-Pulling Road, will occupy one of the outparcels in the shopping center. It is the first and only business to commit to the Hammock Cove expansion thus far, Utter said.
Large for-sale signs on the property advertise four outparcel spaces.
“Generally, that area of town does not have many sit-down restaurants, and so we were hoping to attract a sit-down restaurant, or several, if possible,” he said.
The first phase of Hammock Cove has several restaurants, including FoxBoro Sports Tavern, Subway, Brunina’s Pizza & Pasta and #1 Wok.
Collier Commissioner Donna Fiala, whose district includes that area, said Susie’s Too will be opening there.
Andrew Lypen, owner of Susie’s Too, confirmed the restaurant will move from its current Davis Boulevard location to the Shops at Hammock Cove by early July. He also will open AJ’s Ice Cream, which will be connected to the restaurant. Across the street, a plaza on the north side of U.S. 41 includes Del-Mel Jamaican Restaurant.
“We have very few restaurants here in East Naples, but the ones that we do have are great,” Fiala said. “It’s just that people, I think, would like a little more variety and we don’t have many chain restaurants at all, as a matter of fact.”
In addition to Culver’s, which has locations in more than 20 states, Utter hopes to draw another national chain restaurant to the second phase of the Shops at Hammock Cove. The idea is that several restaurants grouped together tend to draw customers to the area, he said.
“If you look at something like Mercato, people like the activity,” Utter said. “Just because you go to the same location, you are not going to the same restaurant every night.”
Collier Enterprises isn’t targeting fast-food restaurants for the shopping center, but does want to draw a hotel, Utter said.
The site plan also shows space for retail, such as shops.
The second phase of the Shops at Hammock Cove also will feature a 20-foot-wide promenade area, and possibly a dock, along the waterway that separates the plaza from the entrance to the new Isles of Collier Preserve development.
The 2,400-acre residential community is being built to the south and east of the Shops at Hammock Cove. Developer Minto plans to build 1,600 homes, according to the development’s website.
Much of the land within the residential community will not be built on due to environmental restrictions, a fact Minto will capitalize on with hiking and kayak trails.
With home prices starting in the low $400,000s and ranging to the high $700,000s, this kind of development will draw a new level of commercial growth in the area, Fiala said, noting that East Naples has been a popular area for affordable housing.
“The businesses wanting to make a profit never even considered moving to East Naples,” she said, “but now that they’re getting some of these developments that are … in a different price level, now they’re finding reasons to come out here.”
Utter said the developments of Isles of Collier Preserve and Treviso Bay, located just a few miles farther east on U.S. 41, moved his company to go ahead with the planned expansion for the Shops at Hammock Cove. But the appeal of the new businesses won’t stop there.
“I’m just really excited to see what new retail businesses they’re going to bring to the area because we’ve had a tremendous deficit of any retail businesses in this whole area and it will be very nice,” Fiala said. “I know that even Marco Islanders are looking forward to seeing what businesses are coming to this area, because they don’t mind coming over the bridge if there’s some new things to attract them.”
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