Ask anyone in Estero what changed at Coconut Point this year and you'll hear about the same two places: the Roman pizza spot where they cut your crust with scissors, and the steakhouse with the raw bar overlooking the bay. Both are real. Both have lines. Neither one sits on the parcel Simon Property Group actually owns.
Piccolo Buco opened at 22800 Via Villagio Parkway, a separate commercial outparcel just north of the mall's own property line, closer to Hertz's corporate campus than to the fountain court. Acqua Bistecca opened on Coconut Road at Saltleaf Marina, a Bonita Springs address a few miles west, inside a 500-acre community most Estero residents have never driven through except to get to dinner. People call both of them "Coconut Point" news because that's the gravitational center of daily life here. But trace the actual parcel lines and the mall itself picked up zero new restaurants this year.
What it picked up instead is a fight over an empty movie theater.
That's the part worth understanding if you live here. Estero's food scene is expanding onto the land around Coconut Point while the property everyone still calls "the mall" is negotiating whether its next chapter includes any storefronts at all.
The Pizza Place North of the Fountain Court
Piccolo Buco opened to the public on July 13, six years and roughly $6 million after Cooper's Hawk founder Tim McEnery first tasted the original, a 35-seat restaurant steps from Rome's Trevi Fountain. He partnered with that restaurant's owner, Luca Issa, to scale the concept for the U.S. market without losing what made it work. Estero got the fifth location nationally and the first one anywhere in Southwest Florida.
The space runs 7,500 square feet and seats 156 people indoors plus another 28 on the patio, a total of 184. The oven runs around 700 degrees and turns out a pizza in under four minutes, and the crust still gets presented tableside and cut with scissors instead of a wheel, because a wheel collapses the structure Issa spent decades perfecting. Ninety-five people work there now. That's a real hiring number for a village Estero's size, and it landed on a parcel Simon Property Group doesn't own or operate.
A Different Zip Code Four Miles West
Acqua Bistecca opened to the public on Jan. 21, inside Saltleaf Marina at 5500 Coconut Road. The address carries a Bonita Springs designation even though the restaurant sits just west of Estero, on Estero Bay itself. Chef Michael Mina, a James Beard Award winner whose MINA Group runs more than 30 restaurants worldwide, built the menu around Gulf seafood paired with Italian technique: jumbo stone crab claws with mustard sauce, a raw bar with oysters in limoncello mignonette, handmade pastas including a linguine with Florida clams and nduja butter, and a steakhouse anchor built around a 14-ounce Wagyu picanha and a 40-ounce Fiorentina porterhouse sized for the table.
The dining room seats 184 between indoor and outdoor space, including a private chef's room for 16, almost the identical headcount as Piccolo Buco, though one arrived by pizza oven and the other by raw bar. It sits in the shadow of the Ritz-Carlton Residences, Estero Bay, a two-tower, 224-unit project on the same 500-acre Saltleaf site. The first tower, 22 stories and priced from the $3 millions, finished construction this spring. Walk past the restaurant and you reach Saltleaf Golf Preserve, an 18-hole course called The Preserve alongside a nine-hole short course called The Leaf. Both are open to the public now with no membership required and tee times bookable online. A year ago this stretch of Coconut Road was a construction zone with a sales gallery. Now it has a Michelin-pedigreed dining room and two public golf courses attached to a project most Estero residents assumed would stay gated the moment it broke ground.
What's Actually Happening on Simon's Own Parcel
None of that food and golf growth is happening on the acreage Simon Property Group controls. What's happening there is a fight over the old Regal Cinema.
The theater closed in November 2022 when Cineworld filed for Chapter 11, and the building has sat empty at the center of the mall's footprint for nearly four years now. This past January, Simon presented a plan to the Village of Estero's Planning, Zoning and Design Board: demolish the theater and build up to 365 multifamily units across two five-story buildings, a four-story building, and a parking garage, in partnership with Waypoint Residential.
The reaction from residents at that meeting was mixed and not especially quiet.
"It's getting to be an eyesore."
That was Michelle Abner, describing the vacant theater itself. She also pointed out the area lacks any real nightlife once dinner ends, saying it pretty much dies at 9 o'clock. Other residents pushed back harder on what should replace it. Betsy Vary asked how the development would affect traffic and, in her words, the quaintness of the community. Ian Voakes went further, saying the theater needs to be demolished and the citizens of Estero and Southwest Florida would rather see an entertainment district than an apartment building. Not everyone at the meeting agreed apartments were the wrong call. Vicki Angus, who lives nearby in Bonita Springs, said it depends on what kind of apartments go in, and that there's a genuine need for more affordable housing in the corridor.
No vote had been taken as of the most recent reporting on the proposal. The plan is still in front of Estero's zoning board while two restaurants a short drive in either direction opened without any controversy at all.
The Pattern, If You Live Here
Line those three stories up and the shape gets clear fast. The parcels next to Coconut Point, the ones Simon doesn't own, added a $6 million Italian restaurant, a Michelin-pedigreed steakhouse, and two public golf courses inside about six months. The parcel Simon does own is negotiating whether its next chapter is retail at all, or 365 apartment units stacked where a movie screen used to sit.
If you've lived in Estero long enough to remember when Coconut Point's biggest draw after dinner was a Regal marquee, that's worth sitting with. The entertainment anchor that used to pull people back after their table cleared is gone, and whatever eventually fills its footprint probably won't be another storefront. The restaurants people are actually driving to right now, the ones getting credited to "Coconut Point" in conversation, are landing just outside the boundary Simon actually controls.
What Else Is On the Calendar This Fall
One thing hasn't moved. The mall's outdoor art festival returns to the town center on Nov. 22, set up along Via Villagio Drive. It's free to attend and one of the few events still happening on the mall's actual property rather than an outparcel next door.
If Piccolo Buco or Acqua Bistecca are still on your list, plan around that weekend. Both restaurants are new enough, and talked about enough, that a Saturday with an art festival filling the parking field next door is not the day to show up without a reservation.
Chuck Shepherd tracks these shifts because they tell you which pockets of a corridor are gaining ground and which ones are still deciding what they want to become, and that distinction matters whether you're a longtime Estero resident or thinking about your next move in Southwest Florida. If you want a local read on how a neighborhood's zoning, development pipeline, and daily character actually translate into real estate value, reach out to Chuck Shepherd. Contact Chuck to start your Gulf-access search.
