Drive past Four Corners this week and you'll see them: two cranes standing over the block between Fifth and Sixth, right where St. George and the Dragon served plates for more than 40 years before the wrecking crews came in January. Most people walking by assume this means something is about to open. It doesn't. What's actually running out on Fifth Avenue South this month has nothing to do with construction equipment, and it's gone by September 30.
What the crane actually means
The Avenue, the mixed-use project rising on that 4.3-acre site, closed on $202 million in construction financing at the end of July, split between a $93 million traditional loan and $109 million in C-PACE financing through Bayview Commercial Mortgage Finance. That closing let the project move into vertical construction. As of late July, the developer's team described the site work in plain terms: cranes had arrived, and dewatering was underway ahead of concrete operations.
Dewatering ahead of concrete pours is not a fast phase. It's the unglamorous groundwork that has to happen before a single floor goes up, and it's why the completion date sits at early 2028, not next season or the one after. The project broke ground on January 22, which means by the time the first retail tenant opens a door on Oak Row, the pedestrian promenade designed to bisect the block between Fifth and Sixth, the site will have been under construction for roughly two years.
There's a parking detail worth knowing too. When the developer settled a lawsuit with the city back in 2024, one of the terms was dropping underground parking from the plans entirely. What's coming is 326 spaces across a valet and self-park garage, not a new below-grade structure. For anyone who parks near Four Corners now, that's the honest read: the crane means a two-year build is underway, not that shops open next spring, and the parking picture at the finished project won't be dramatically different from what a garage already provides today.
So if your read on the cranes was "here we go, something new soon," the more accurate read is: the loudest visible change on the avenue right now is also the slowest one. Nothing at street level changes because of it for a long while yet.
The one day that actually closes the street
If you want real, immediate disruption to a normal Thursday on Fifth Avenue, that happens on September 10, when the Naples Automotive Experience brings its Crown Jewel car show to the avenue. More than 750 rare, exotic, and classic cars line the street for the day, benefiting Habitat for Humanity of Collier County. This is the kind of event that actually changes how you get from your car to a restaurant that day, unlike a construction site two years from completion. If you have a reservation on the avenue that Thursday, plan to arrive on foot or build in extra time.
The clock that's actually running out
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're only watching the cranes: the real countdown on Fifth Avenue South right now isn't a construction timeline, it's a pricing one, and it ends in three weeks.
Flavors of Fifth, the avenue's prix-fixe dining promotion, runs from July 8 through September 30. Twelve restaurants are participating this year: Aqua, bha! bha! Persian Bistro, Bistro 821, Caffé Milano, Del Mar Naples, Le Colonial, Ocean Prime, Osteria Tulia, Sails, Truluck's, Tulia Italian Steak, and Vergina. Every menu sold also contributes to community initiatives through Beverly's Angels, which supports local workers and their families.
This is the piece that residents who've lived through a few Naples summers already understand and newcomers tend to miss: the rooms that stay open through the off-season price for the people who actually live here, and that pricing disappears the week high season starts. A crane at Four Corners is a two-year story. A prix-fixe menu at Vergina is a three-week story. If your rotation has been sitting untouched since spring, this is the actual deadline, not the one the construction fencing seems to imply.
The smaller things that don't make headlines but change your walk
A few blocks south, Cambier Park's playground is closed for a project of its own, which matters if your normal loop through downtown includes a stop there with kids. It's not tied to The Avenue construction. It's a separate, smaller city project, and it's the kind of detail that never makes a headline but absolutely changes a Tuesday afternoon if you didn't know about it.
Parking on the avenue itself hasn't changed. Free on-street parking, the garages on 8th Street South, and the public lot on Park Street are all still there, the same as they've been. What has changed, and what most people conflate with the Four Corners construction, is that beach access at 12th Avenue South and the pier itself remain closed for the separate pier rebuild project, a timeline that has nothing to do with The Avenue and finishes on its own schedule. Fifth Avenue South's own beach access point is open. Two different construction stories, two different endpoints, easy to blur together if you're just watching orange cones from a distance.
What this actually means if you live near the avenue
The mistake is treating September as one undifferentiated season of "the avenue is changing." It isn't. Some of what's happening right now is a slow structural shift that won't touch daily life again until 2028. Some of it is a single day you should plan around. And some of it is a genuine deadline, priced in dollars, that closes at the end of the month.
If you're weighing all three against each other: the crane is patient, the car show is a day, and the prix-fixe window is the one actually worth acting on before it's gone. Put a fork in one of the twelve participating restaurants before September 30, plan around foot traffic on the 10th, and don't expect the block at Four Corners to look meaningfully different by the time next season starts. It won't, and that's not a bad thing. It's just not the story most people assume it is when they see the cranes go up.
If you're watching Fifth Avenue South change and wondering what it means for a property nearby, whether you already own one or you're weighing a move into Old Naples, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks these timelines block by block. Peggy Siebert works this corridor and the rest of Southwest Florida's luxury market every day, and she's happy to walk through what a specific address on or near the avenue should actually deliver, construction timeline included. Let's Connect.
