August 20, 2026
For the past few years, anyone driving the stretch of Airport-Pulling Road near Pine Ridge Road got used to seeing the same blank facade: a hulking, vacant storefront with faded signage ghosting where Bed Bath & Beyond used to be. It sat there through hurricane seasons and snowbird winters, a 45,000-square-foot gap in an otherwise busy corridor. This spring the paper came off the windows. By May, there was a grocery store inside it again, and if you know the building's history, "again" is the important word.
That single fact says more about how Pine Ridge Estates residents will run their errands this year than any amount of talk about new restaurants or boutique openings. The corner of Airport-Pulling and Pine Ridge roads isn't becoming a destination. It's becoming useful again, and the way that happened is worth walking through.
Ridgeport Plaza, the shopping center on the northwest corner of that intersection, was built in the late 1980s with a Winn-Dixie as its anchor. That grocery store held the space until 1995, when it was replaced by Bed Bath & Beyond, which stayed for decades until the chain's collapse left the anchor unit empty. The Winn-Dixie itself didn't vanish. It relocated across the street to Carillon Place, where the building now houses a Walmart Neighborhood Market.
So the corner has been without a real grocery anchor of its own since Bed Bath & Beyond moved in three decades ago, even with a supermarket sitting in plain sight across the intersection the whole time. That's the detail that gets lost in the "new store opening" headlines: this isn't a plaza getting its first grocery tenant. It's a plaza getting its grocery tenant back, in a building that has now cycled through three completely different identities on the same footprint.
The anchor space split into two stores rather than one. Sprouts Farmers Market took the northern unit, a 24,491-square-foot store that opened May 15 at 5351 Airport-Pulling Road. It's the chain's second Collier County location, following the original store that opened at Logan Landings back in 2019 at a slightly larger 29,843 square feet. If you've shopped that first Sprouts, the new one will feel familiar but a touch more compact, same open produce-forward layout, smaller footprint.
The southern half of the old Bed Bath & Beyond box went to Golf Galaxy, and this is the part that's happening right now. The Dick's Sporting Goods-owned retailer is relocating from its freestanding building in the Promenade at Naples Centre into a 20,780-square-foot inline space at Ridgeport Plaza, down more than 40 percent from its previous 35,355-square-foot store. The move was targeted for the third week of August, which means if you drive past this week, you may catch the new location opening its doors for the first time. The smaller footprint doesn't mean fewer services. The new store keeps its hitting bays, simulators, putting greens, and access to PGA and LPGA-certified fitting staff, just inside a tighter shell.
A third tenant rounds out the plaza's new lineup. Max's Natural Pet Market & Salon opened in early June in an inline unit just south of Golf Galaxy, at 5327 Airport-Pulling Road, a space that had been home to Before & After Salon & Spa for years before that. It's the sixth location for the Florida-based pet retailer, whose only other regional store sits near Topgolf in Fort Myers.
Three tenants, one building, all landing within a few months of each other:
None of this is luxury retail, and that's exactly why it matters more than another restaurant opening at Mercato. Pine Ridge Estates residents already have plenty of upscale dining and shopping within a short drive. What the neighborhood hasn't had, for years, is a grocery run and a pet grooming appointment and a golf equipment fitting all sitting inside the same plaza a few minutes from home.
That's a small thing until you actually live it. A produce run that used to mean a longer drive north or a stop at whichever supermarket happened to be on the way now has a closer option with a different assortment: bulk bins, an organic-heavy selection, and a format built around fresh food rather than aisles of everything. A dog groomer or a bag of prescription pet food no longer requires a special trip across town. And golfers who've been driving to the Promenade for a club fitting will find the same certified staff and simulator bays a half mile south on the same road, just in a smaller room.
The pattern is a corridor filling back in with the ordinary stuff of a week, not the special-occasion stuff. That's a different kind of neighborhood news than a hotel groundbreaking or a luxury dealership going up somewhere else on Pine Ridge Road. It's the kind that actually changes what a Tuesday looks like.
Pine Ridge Estates has always carried a reputation for its large lots and, on some parcels, zoning that still permits agricultural use, which is part of why the neighborhood has an equestrian streak that shows up in fencing, paddocks, and the occasional horse trailer parked in a driveway. That character has a physical home inside the neighborhood at 206 Ridge Drive, where the Naples Therapeutic Riding Center has operated for years, providing therapeutic riding programs for children and adults with disabilities.
The center had a notable spring. Its Kentucky Derby Party on May 5 set a fundraising record for the event, and in March the organization welcomed Laura Georgelos to its board of directors. Neither is a headline that would make it onto a real estate portal, but both are the kind of detail that tells you something true about the neighborhood: it's the sort of place where a therapeutic riding nonprofit sits a few blocks from an equestrian-zoned lot, hosts a Derby party that draws a crowd big enough to set a record, and adds new board leadership in the same season a grocery store finally comes back to the corner.
If you've got horses, or kids who ride, or simply an afternoon to spare, the center takes volunteers alongside its therapeutic riders, and its Derby Party has become enough of an institution that it's worth watching for next year's date.
None of these updates individually would carry a whole post. Together, they describe something specific: Pine Ridge Estates spent the first half of 2026 quietly filling in the gaps in its own daily routine. A grocery store returned to a building that hadn't held one in thirty years. A golf shop halved its footprint but kept its full slate of services and moved half a mile closer. A pet market took over a long-running salon space. And a neighborhood nonprofit that's been quietly doing its work on Ridge Drive for years had its biggest fundraising night yet.
That's not a story about growth in the abstract. It's a story about a specific corner getting more useful, and a specific nonprofit getting a little more support, in the same season.
If you're already living the Pine Ridge Estates routine and want a local perspective on what's actually changing around you, from retail corridors to the market itself, Heather Hobrock keeps close watch on this stretch of Naples. Discover Your Place in Naples.
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