Fort Myers Beach Approves Final Rebuild Plans for the Wyndham and Silver Sands Hotel Sites

At back-to-back public hearings on September 9, 2026, Fort Myers Beach Town Council gave final approval for developers to rebuild on two hospitality properties that Hurricane Ian destroyed in 2022, according to reporting published September 10 by Gulfshore Business. One hearing covered the former Wyndham hotel property on the south end of Estero Island, in the Santini Marina area. The other covered the former Silver Sands property on the north end, near the Times Square entertainment district.

I am Kris Asquith, Broker Associate at Premiere Plus Realty, and I sell across nine Southwest Florida markets including Fort Myers Beach.

The Wyndham Garden hotel at 6890 Estero Blvd. was a 1969 building, originally a Holiday Inn, that Ian left irreparably damaged and that was later demolished. Town Council voted 4-0 to approve a two-phase redevelopment plan for the 11.2-acre site, with Councilor John McLean excused from the meeting, Gulfshore Business reported. The town's Local Planning Agency had already recommended approval.

The developer, FMBH LLC, an entity connected to the Naples-based Pohlmann family trust, plans to move on the first phase quickly. That phase adds a beach recreation area with an open-air tiki bar, temporary mobile food vendors, live entertainment, water sports activities and parking, operating from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. A second phase, timing still undetermined, would follow with a permanent restaurant structure, additional recreational amenities including a pool with a lazy river, and a wave dissipation wall, which requires its own design, permitting and an official flood map revision before construction can start.

There is no hotel in either phase. The property owners told the town that rebuilding a hotel or resort remains the "highest and best use" of the site, but that it is not financially viable right now, Gulfshore Business reported.

The former Silver Sands cottages at 1207 Estero Blvd., built in 1921, no longer exist. In their place, Town Council voted 3-0 to approve a six-story hotel proposed by TPI Hospitality, the Minnesota-based developer behind the neighboring Margaritaville Beach Resort, which opened in 2023, Gulfshore Business reported. Mayor Dan Allers recused himself because of a business relationship with TPI, and Councilor McLean was again excused.

The project has a new name: recently renamed from Silver Sands Resort to One Particular Harbour, according to Gulfshore Business. It replaces a much smaller 1921 boutique hotel that had 22 units, according to Beach Talk Radio News, with a new six-story building holding 60 rooms, approved for roughly double the standard 30-foot height limit that would otherwise apply. Plans include 2,500 square feet of retail space on the ground level, a rooftop pool, streetscape improvements, and shared guest access to Margaritaville's amenities next door. The site is being rezoned from its Downtown designation to Commercial Planned Development to accommodate the project, and the town's Local Planning Agency recommended approval of it and its code deviations back in June.

A town staff report found the project consistent with the island's taller, denser post-Ian developments, naming Margaritaville, Lighthouse Resort and Arches Bayfront Hotel as comparable examples, Gulfshore Business reported.

The two approvals land in genuinely different places, and that is worth sitting with rather than treating both as the same kind of news. At Wyndham, the property owners themselves say a hotel is still the "highest and best use" of that land, just not one they can build today. What is approved there instead is a lower-cost, faster-to-open recreation and dining use, the kind of project that can open in phases while the larger question about a future hotel stays open.

At Silver Sands, TPI Hospitality already operates next door at Margaritaville, and One Particular Harbour is designed to share amenities with it rather than stand alone. That is a different kind of bet: a developer already invested in that stretch of the island extending its own footprint, not a first mover deciding whether the market can support a new hotel from scratch.

For the Wyndham site, representatives for FMBH LLC said they intend to move on the first phase as quickly as possible. How long the second phase takes depends on permitting and on the flood map revision needed before permanent structures can go up, which an attorney for the developers told the town is not yet clear.

For One Particular Harbour, Beach Talk Radio News reported that design and permitting are expected to take roughly a year, followed by about a year and a half of construction. Both timelines are estimates at this stage of a project, not commitments, and both can move once permitting, engineering and site conditions are fully worked out.

Nobody can honestly tell you what either project does to a specific property's value, and it is fair to be skeptical of anyone who tries to put a number on it this early. What is fair to say is that both approvals are real progress on two sites that have sat as Hurricane Ian damage since 2022, and that progress, on its own, is part of how the island reads to a buyer walking it today versus three years ago.

Both sites sit within the stretch of Fort Myers Beach that has been rebuilding block by block since the storm. If you are looking at Fort Myers Beach condos or Fort Myers Beach waterfront homes near either end of the island, what is actually under construction nearby, and on what timeline, is a more useful thing to track than a headline about an approval.

As one input, checked against the actual project timeline, not the headline. A council approval is a real milestone. It is not a finished amenity, and both of the projects above still have permitting, design and construction ahead of them before either one changes what a visitor or a buyer actually sees on the ground.

The details that decide what a specific address near either site is worth to own, insure and maintain rarely make the news: elevation, what flood insurance actually runs on that address, and what a survey and inspection turn up. The inspection stage of the home buying process is where each of those gets checked before you are ever committed to anything.

If you want a straight read on how either project affects a specific address on Fort Myers Beach, get in touch or call (239) 300-1427.