Pier Sixty-Six Says It's Back. Harbor Beach Knows It's Only Half Open.

If you live in Harbor Beach, you have heard the word "reopened" applied to Pier Sixty-Six enough times over the past year that it starts to sound like a settled fact. It is not. Walk the property today and you will find a resort running on two different clocks at once: one set of doors that opened months ago and are now full of regulars, and another set that is still dark, still under scaffolding, or still just a rendering on a permit application. For a neighborhood built around this 32-acre site at the foot of the 17th Street Causeway, that distinction is not trivia. It is the difference between planning a Tuesday dinner two blocks from home and driving to Las Olas instead.

The short version: Calusso, Sotogrande, Garni Café, and the Nectar Room are open and staffed. Pier Top, the revolving 17th-floor lounge that has anchored this stretch of waterfront since 1965, is spinning again. Pelican Landing, the marina-side fish shack generations of Fort Lauderdale families associate with the old Pier 66, was still not back as of this spring. And in May, Tavistock quietly filed for a second act nobody in the neighborhood was expecting yet, four more towers on eight acres surrounding the property that would keep this stretch of SE 17th Street under some form of construction well past 2028.

That last part is the piece worth sitting with. Harbor Beach residents were told the resort had returned. What actually happened is closer to a phased handoff that has years left to run.

What's Actually Running Right Now

The dining lineup that opened alongside the resort's 2025 return is the version of Pier Sixty-Six most residents have already sampled:

• Calusso, the signature restaurant, drawing on French and Italian riviera cooking
• Sotogrande, built around Southern Spain and the Eastern Mediterranean
• Garni Café, running the daytime and brunch service
• Nectar Room, the bar serving the adults-only pool deck
• Pier Top, the rotating rooftop lounge, back in service after its own separate restoration

That is a working restaurant group, not a construction site. Colm O'Callaghan, the property's vice president and managing director, described the ambition behind it plainly in a Forbes Travel Guide feature this spring: "We're just scratching the surface of what's possible." Whatever comes next, the neighborhood no longer needs to wait for a dinner reservation within walking distance of Del Lago Isle or Laguna Isle. That part of the promise has already been delivered.

The One Door Still Closed

Pelican Landing is the exception, and it is worth naming because it is the one most residents actually remember. Before the redevelopment, it was the no-frills, marina-side fish shack that generations of local families treated as a fixture, the kind of place you took visiting relatives without needing a reservation. As of this spring, it had not yet reopened. Tavistock and the resort's management have described its return as intentionally casual, aiming to keep the original South Florida fish shack character rather than replace it with something more polished. No confirmed reopening date beyond "later this year" was available as of the most recent reporting, so if you are counting on grabbing a table there before the holidays, it is worth checking directly rather than assuming.

The gap matters for a reason beyond nostalgia. Pelican Landing was always the low-key, walk-in counterpart to the resort's more formal dining rooms, the release valve for a quick weeknight meal that didn't require a jacket or a reservation three weeks out. Until it reopens, that specific niche in the neighborhood's daily rotation stays unfilled.

Then Came Phase II

In late May, Tavistock Development Company filed plans for a second phase that extends well beyond the resort's original 32-acre footprint. The proposal covers roughly eight additional acres immediately around the property, split into a 1.4-acre parcel north of SE 17th Street and a larger 6.6-acre parcel to the south. On those two sites, the plan calls for four towers rising 23 stories, or about 270 feet, yielding 339 new residences, along with office space, retail, restaurants, more structured parking, and expanded marina facilities.

One tower would rise on the north parcel; the other three on the south parcel, all positioned east of the 17th Street Causeway bridge, essentially wrapping the existing hotel and residential towers with a second layer of development.

The plan also includes something the neighborhood has actually been asking for: a new public gathering space beneath the 17th Street bridge itself, developed in partnership with the City of Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Department of Transportation. That stretch of underused land beneath the bridge would become a public amenity linking both sides of the waterfront, rather than sitting as leftover space between a parking lot and a seawall. Whether that space delivers on its promise is a fair question for residents to keep watching. But the intent, at least, is to give the neighborhood something usable out of a construction cycle that will otherwise mostly be inconvenience.

None of this is under construction yet. It is a filed proposal, reviewed by the city's planning process, not a groundbreaking. But for a neighborhood that spent years living beside cranes during the original redevelopment, which itself gained momentum after Hurricane Irma damaged the old property in 2017 and finally reopened in 2025, the timing of this announcement matters. The resort barely finished one construction cycle before starting to plan the next one.

What This Means If You Live Here

A few practical takeaways for anyone in Harborage Isle, Isla Bahia, Harbor Isles, or any of the other pockets that make up this stretch of the barrier island:

The restaurant rotation you have access to today is close to final for the current phase. Calusso, Sotogrande, Garni Café, and the Nectar Room are staffed and running, so if you have been putting off trying the property's dining room because you assumed it was still mid-construction, that assumption is out of date.

Pelican Landing is the one gap worth tracking if casual, walk-in dining near the marina matters to your routine. Check directly with the resort before planning around it.

The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show returns to the city's waterfront venues again this fall, and the Pier Sixty-Six marina, with its 164 slips and roughly 5,000 linear feet of dockage, remains one of the anchor points for that event. If you are used to the extra boat traffic and foot traffic that the show brings to the 17th Street corridor, expect the same pattern this year.

And if Phase II moves from proposal to permit in the next year or two, plan on a second wave of construction noise and staging traffic along SE 17th Street, on top of whatever disruption the original redevelopment already put you through. The neighborhood has been here before. It is reasonable to expect it again, just on a different timeline than most residents assumed.

The headline version of this story, the one that gets repeated at dinner parties and in passing, is that Pier Sixty-Six came back. The more accurate version, and the one that actually affects how you plan your week, is that it came back in pieces, on a schedule that is still being written, with the next chapter already filed at city hall before the last one finished settling in.

If you are weighing what any of this means for property values, dock access, or the long-term character of the neighborhood, that is a conversation worth having with someone who tracks Harbor Beach closely. Gilles Rais Fine Homes works this stretch of Fort Lauderdale's waterfront directly and can walk you through what a multi-year construction cycle next door has historically meant for homes on Laguna Isle, Del Lago Isle, and the rest of the neighborhood. Request a private consultation when you are ready to talk specifics.