Inside Pelican Landing This Season: The Amenities Residents Underuse and the New Openings Just Outside the Gates
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
The 12 minute shuttle across Estero Bay to the 34 acre island beach park is the picture most people paint of Pelican Landing. It is a fair picture. It is also a small fraction of what the community and its immediate surroundings have queued up for this season, and if you already live here, the rhythm of a good winter week is worth rethinking.
Here is the argument for this piece. Most residents lean on two habits, the island shuttle and a rotation of familiar spots at Coconut Point. Both got quietly upgraded in 2026, and the community's own less visible amenities, the Sailing Center fleet, the Spring Creek Canoe Park, the Har-Tru clay courts, are still underused by full time and seasonal owners alike. Stacking the two sides of the gate is what makes this season different from the last one.
The Sailing Center at Coconut Point Marina keeps a fleet of Hobie Wave, American 18, and ten Sunfish sailboats, and lessons for novices are complimentary through the community's sailing club, which also runs group sails, races, and the annual Commodore's Ball. If you have lived here for years and never booked a qualification session, that is the single fastest way to change how your winter feels. The bay is the amenity. The boats are already paid for through the assessment.
The Spring Creek Canoe Park on Pelican's Nest Drive is the quieter counterpart. There is a launch, docks, a scenic boardwalk, and a picnic area, plus racks for resident owned kayaks and canoes, and complimentary access to community boats. The creek winds toward Estero Bay through mangrove, and group paddles led by experienced residents are on the calendar most weeks in season. It is a fifteen minute drive to nothing you can find at any public launch in Lee County.
The Tennis Center runs 12 newly renovated Har-Tru clay courts with seven lighted for night play, a full time pro, league play, and clinics. Six pickleball courts and two bocce lawns sit alongside. Har-Tru is the surface that hurts you less at 65 than a hard court does at 45, which is part of why it holds up as a signature amenity in an established community.
The 34 acre beach park sits at the northern end of Big Hickory Island, and the boat ride from Coconut Point Marina runs about 12 minutes across Estero Bay. The park is staffed year round, with restrooms, showers, two open pavilions, and a large screened pavilion with a deck. Beach chairs and umbrellas are set out daily.
There is currently no food service on the island, per the community association, so a Publix stop on the way to the marina remains part of the ritual.
Three docks handle fishing inside the gates, two on Spring Creek and one on Lakemont Cove, plus seven of the community's 59 lakes are stocked and open to residents. Boat owners can lease slips at the community owned Coconut Point Marina or at Red Fish Docks behind Pelican's Nest Golf Club. If you fish and you have not walked Red Fish Docks in a season or two, the standing wait list for slips is worth checking against your current arrangement.
The Community Center schedule for January and February 2026 published across resident and rental listings includes a BBQ buffet party, a Groovy 60's night with a live band, a fashion show luncheon, a Fat Tuesday party, an On Safari African Adventure evening, a Florida Wildlife Corridor presentation, a book signing with author Susannah Marren, a Bob Williams and Friends show, a travelogue with Jim Sernovitz, a wine and canvas party, and neighbor gatherings anchored by the Pelican Patchers, the Knitting Group, and the Acoustic Jam. On top of that:
Roughly 30% of Pelican Landing residents live here year round, per publicly available community data, which is the mechanical reason the calendar thickens between January and April. If you are a full time owner, that ratio is also why season is the window to actually get to know the neighbors you nod at in the parking lot the other eight months.
Two things happened in 2026 that reshape the off property half of a resident's week.
The Ronto Group's Infinity high rise inside The Colony at Pelican Landing opened this February. The Business Observer's coverage detailed the amenity package: a nine hole par 3 putting course lit for evening play, a multi level theater room, a wellness center with steam, sauna, and hot and cold plunge pools, a pickleball court, a family pool, an adults only lap lane, four guest suites, two bocce lawns, a dog park, and a yoga lawn. Ronto President Anthony Solomon described it as "a resort within a resort". For Pelican Landing residents who are not Colony owners, the practical relevance is quieter but real. A new luxury delivery of this scale tends to reset resale comps and rental expectations across the shared master community, and it changes the composition of who shows up at the shared island beach.
Coconut Point is two miles from the north gate, and its lineup as of the 2025 to 2026 season looks different than it did the last time many seasonal owners were here. Reporting from Naples Press and Gulfshore Business documented several openings:
The Hyatt Regency Coconut Point resort next door is worth keeping in the rotation too. Tanglewood, its Southern kitchen, was reimagined in 2024 under Executive Chef Rich McCaw, and Tarpon Bay's Sunday brunch competes with the Naples hotel brunch circuit. Both restaurants are open to non guests, and self parking is complimentary.
Here is the practical read on all of this. A well built Pelican Landing week in February 2026 does not look like a week in February 2022. The community's own amenities have not changed much, but the off property half of the map has. A morning sail out of Coconut Point Marina, a Har-Tru clinic in the afternoon, and a 7:30 a.m. breakfast at Alba before the Big Hickory shuttle the next day is a rhythm that was not available two winters ago. Adding a Wildlife Corridor presentation at the Community Center or a food truck night with neighbors is what turns a snowbird cadence into a resident cadence.
If you have been here for years, the ask is small. Book one thing on the property you have never used. If you are new to a home inside the gates, the sailing lessons and the canoe park are the two amenities that pay for themselves fastest against the annual assessment.
When it is time to reassess your home's value in a market where new luxury deliveries are moving the ceiling and inventory continues to turn, Kevin Shelly Realty tracks Pelican Landing and The Colony resale block by block. Reach out for a private valuation or a walk through your options for the next season.
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