Rose Marina Got a Yes. The Hilton Got a Warning. Same Attorney, Same Board, Different Outcome.

On August 21, 2026, election workers in Collier County sat down to recount a $23 million bond referendum that Marco Island had just voted on. The margin was close enough that state law required a second look. When the recount finished, the result held: the bond passed by a single vote. City Manager Casey Lucius told WGCU News that council still has to formally authorize the borrowing, a step scheduled for a meeting the second week of September, before any of that $23 million starts flowing toward the bridges, road paving, and stormwater work the city says it needs.

That one-vote margin is worth sitting with, because it landed in the same summer that two much bigger decisions about the island's physical shape were working their way through the same planning board. Rose Marina wants to add a 200-seat waterfront restaurant on Bald Eagle Drive. The Hilton Marco Island Resort and Spa wants to more than double its room count. Both applications went in front of the board about a week apart in late July. Both used the same land use attorney. And they came out with opposite institutional receptions.

If you live here, that split is the actual story. Not because either project breaks ground this fall, but because it shows you which lever Marco Island's growth machine actually responds to.

The Marina That Got a Yes

Rose Marina has operated at 951 Bald Eagle Drive, in Factory Bay, since it opened as Marco River Marina in 1969. It's surrounded on land by residential streets, including Magnolia Court, which sits close enough to the property line that neighbors showed up to object. The marina's owners are asking to build the 200-seat restaurant, expand an existing parking lot, add 20 outdoor boat storage racks, and reconfigure parking to meet current code. Some of the marina's touring operations, including the Marco Island Princess and the Key West Express, are also expanding passenger counts, which is part of why more parking is on the table at all.

Elizabeth Fitch, who lives on Magnolia Court, told the planning board the project amounts to commercial overdevelopment pressed against a quiet residential boundary, and that it works against the city's own mandate to protect small-town charm and low density. On the other side, Rich Blonna, a former city council member who lives several miles away on San Marco Road, called Rose Marina a treasured island resource and urged approval.

The board voted 5-2 on July 23 to recommend the city council approve it, with conditions attached: no debarkation vessel can stay overnight except in severe weather, no more than two commercial vessels over 100 feet or 100 passengers can moor in the Magnolia waterway or marina basin at once, and no more than three tour buses can be on the property at a time. Those conditions read like an attempt to buy down exactly the traffic and noise complaints Fitch raised, without stopping the project.

The Resort That Got a Warning

The Hilton's ask is larger in absolute terms. The resort wants to rezone from residential tourist to planned unit development, which would let it add a second tower, a parking garage, and a second restaurant, taking its beachfront room count from 310 to roughly 626 on its 10.5 acres. The planning board spent about three and a half hours on the request on July 31.

Here's where the outcome diverges from Rose Marina's. City Director of Community Affairs Dan Smith told the board the Hilton's proposal does not fit the city's comprehensive plan, a document adopted October 4, 2021, whose first goal is that development support the city's livable small-town community and protect its tropical beaches, natural resources, and small-town charm. That's a rare recommendation from staff to deny outright.

The board still voted 3-2 to send the matter to city council with an approval recommendation, but the debate that produced that vote sounds nothing like Rose Marina's. One planning board member questioned how the city could justify cramming more density into an area already close to unmanageable in high season. Resident Lisa Foster said the proposal is so far outside the comprehensive plan that she'll ask neighbors to consider legal action if council approves the rezoning. Local restaurant owner and developer Tony Oliverio, who also used the same attorney representing both projects, argued for a compromise: cap the number of rooms in the PUD rather than deny it outright, pointing to the tax revenue a larger resort could generate for road and bridge repairs the city has said could cost $50 million.

What the Same Attorney Tells You

Zach Lombardo represented both Rose Marina and the Hilton in front of the planning board this summer, and his argument in both rooms was essentially the same: approval decisions are supposed to run on the city's Land Development Code, not on whether the board or the public likes the project. He said as much directly to the board while defending Rose Marina, reminding members that the standard isn't the public benefit of a project to the island as a whole.

That framing worked cleanly for Rose Marina, which needed a site development plan amendment, a narrower administrative process that doesn't force the board to weigh the request against the comprehensive plan's small-town language. It worked less cleanly for the Hilton, which needed an actual rezoning to a planned unit development, a process that put the comprehensive plan's stated goals directly in front of the board and gave staff a specific hook to recommend denial.

That's the mechanism worth remembering if you're trying to predict how the next contested project on this island shakes out. Scale alone didn't decide the outcome. The Hilton's ask affects a resort district with no immediately abutting residential street, while Rose Marina's ask sits against Magnolia Court. Yet the Hilton drew the harder institutional resistance, because doubling a room count through a PUD rezoning forces a direct comparison to a planning document that literally uses the words small-town charm. Adding a restaurant to an existing marina through an SDPA doesn't trigger that same comparison, even when the practical effect on a residential street is arguably just as real.

Here's how the two requests compare heading into council review:

What Actually Changes This Fall

Neither project is built yet. Both go to Marco Island City Council for the actual decision in the coming months, and council can still send either one back, attach new conditions, or vote it down outright. What's already locked in is the bond authorization vote scheduled for the second week of September, which will start moving the $23 million toward bridges, paving, and stormwater work, at a cost to the average homeowner, whose taxable value on Marco runs around $580,000, of roughly $60 more a year for up to 20 years.

If you live near Bald Eagle Drive or Magnolia Court, the marina outcome is the one to track for tour bus counts and marina basin traffic. If you live anywhere near the Hilton's stretch of beachfront, or you just care about how the city interprets its own comprehensive plan, that vote is the one that will tell you whether small-town charm is an enforceable standard or a phrase that only holds when a rezoning forces the question. Either way, an island that just decided a $23 million infrastructure bond by a single ballot is not an island where these votes are foregone conclusions. Watch the council agenda, not the rumor mill, for what happens next.

If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific property near Rose Marina, the Hilton corridor, or elsewhere on the island, Kevin Shelly Realty tracks these local decisions as they move through council, not after they've already reshaped a neighborhood. Reach out and we'll walk you through what's actually on the table.