Naples neighborhood upset over busy beach renourishment project

A luxury area of Naples is seeing hundreds of construction vehicles coming in and out. And they’re lugging thousands of tons of sand.

However, those truck trips in and out are said to have a large payoff down the road.

There are so many trucks coming in and out of one Naples neighborhood that there’s now a crossing guard on duty to keep people safe.

David Shorr lives nearby. “There’s so much traffic on this street already in a way we’re kind of used to it. A lot of construction traffic,” said Shorr.

The people who live, bike and walk near the 3rd Avenue North Beach Access Point at Naples Beach say this has been their reality for a little while. Detlef Mueller cycles in the neighborhood. “We’re riding our bikes here we encountered the trucks and of course it’s a nuisance,” Mueller said.

“It’s going to be a lot of traffic, we’ll be happy when it’s over,” Shorr said.

The bad part is that the construction may not be over for a while hopefully by Thanksgiving.

Collier County’s $5 million renourishment project got underway on Monday. The trucks will be hauling 105,000 tons of sand to Naples Beach from Lowdermilk Park to the Naples Pier.

Penny Taylor is a Collier County Commissioner. “This is not an easy thing to bear, to have big trucks rolling down the street, to have this activity at the beach,” Taylor said.

Commissioner Taylor says the truck will be out there Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. until the project is completed. “The end result, I hope and I pray, will be worth it,” said Taylor.

After Naples Beach is finished, Vanderbilt Beach is next on the list. Collier County hopes to start dumping fresh sand on Vanderbilt Beach by December.

According to city leaders in Collier County, two other areas of Collier County Beach are being renourished as part of the same contract are:

A section of Vanderbilt Beach and a relatively small portion of Pelican Bay Beach. In total, the project will add 268,500 tons of sand to the beaches; 105,000 tons will go on the Naples Beach section. The county is estimating that the Naples Beach portion will be concluded at the end of November.

This is timed with the end of the annual turtle nesting season on November 1st. The remainder of the project on the county beaches is expected to last through January 2022. Commissioner Taylor said they hope to be finished with the Naples portion by Thanksgiving and move onto Vanderbilt Beach in December.

This project will be funded using Tourist Development Tax funds. The Pelican Bay area is going to be funded through the Pelican Bay Services Division.

The new route has been announced: Trucks heading to the beach location in City of Naples will travel from Stewart Mine in Immokalee to I-75, exit at Golden Gate Parkway, head west to US 41, go south to Banyan Boulevard and then head west to Gulf Shore Boulevard. They’ll then travel south to 3rd Avenue North and unload the beach-quality sand at that beach site. The outbound route is north on Gulf Shore Boulevard to east on Mooring Line Drive to south on US 41 and then east on Golden Gate Parkway and back to I-75.