"To me that banyan tree represents roots in the community with branches growing as the years pass, and London Bay is part of those branches now."
Jim Weeks said that in June, standing at a ribbon-cutting on a stretch of Estero Bay his family has known since before Bonita Springs was much of anything. He was talking about the century-old banyan in downtown's Riverside Park, but he was really talking about the ground under his feet. His grandparents built a fishing shack there in the 1930s. It grew into Weeks Fish Camp, a working waterfront that stayed open to anyone who wanted to fish, photograph wildlife, or launch a boat for most of the twentieth century. In 2014 it closed. For more than a decade, if you drove to the western end of Coconut Road, you hit a fence.
That fence came down on June 22, 2026. What replaced it is Saltleaf Marina, a 72-slip public facility built by Naples-based developer London Bay Development Group at a cost of $8.5 million. If you live in Bonita Springs and have wondered for years what was happening behind that gate, the short answer is: a private developer just finished building something it didn't have to make public at all.
What Actually Reopened
Saltleaf Marina sits at 5500 Coconut Road, at the point where the road dead-ends into Estero Bay. It's designed for vessels up to 30 feet, with slips available both for annual lease and for public launch access. London Bay's contractor, Kelly Brothers, finished the project on time and under budget, according to CEO Mark Wilson's remarks at the opening.
The ceremony itself tells you something about how this project was treated locally. It wasn't just a developer's press event. Bonita Springs Mayor Mike Gibson and Lee County Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass both attended, alongside Jim Weeks and his brother John, the grandsons of the couple who built the original camp. The brothers spent part of the afternoon in the new ship's store, looking at old photographs of the family's fishing operation now displayed on the shelves alongside the sundries and rental gear.
Here's what's actually on site now:
- 72 boat slips for vessels up to 30 feet, available for lease or public launch
- A ship's store stocked with boating supplies and historic Weeks Fish Camp photographs
- Kayak and paddleboard rentals for use on Estero Bay
- Waterfront dining next door at Acqua Bistecca, which opened in January
A Longer Story Than the Ribbon-Cutting Suggests
The site's history matters here because it explains why this opening got the kind of attention a marina opening doesn't usually get. Draine and Mamie Weeks built their original shack on this stretch of bay in the 1930s. By the 1940s, the family had opened it to the public for commercial fishing, wildlife photography, and marine research, and it stayed that way for generations. Locals fished there, photographed birds there, and in some cases learned to boat there.
The property eventually passed out of the family's hands and into private development, and by 2014 it had closed to the public entirely. When London Bay acquired the 40-acre tract in 2018 to build what's now the 500-acre Saltleaf on Estero Bay community, the fate of public water access became a real point of negotiation between the developer and both city officials and the Weeks family, who worried the old camp's connection to the public would simply disappear under new construction.
| Weeks Fish Camp, pre-2014 | Saltleaf Marina, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Public access | Open, family-run | Open, covenant-guaranteed |
| Capacity | Small working camp | 72 slips, vessels to 30 ft |
| On-site amenities | Fishing camp, dock | Ship's store, rentals, restaurant next door |
| Ownership | Weeks family | London Bay Development Group |
Why "Public Forever" Is the Real News
Most of the waterfront in Bonita Springs and Estero is privately owned, which is part of why a new public marina here is unusual to begin with. What makes this one different from a standard amenity build isn't the slip count. It's the terms.
Wilson has said the agreement isn't a temporary concession to smooth over permitting. "We do have an agreement that the marina is open in perpetuity," he said at the opening. "So this isn't, you know, opening for a few years. This is forever." That distinction matters for a piece of waterfront that technically sits within Bonita Springs city limits, at the western end of Coconut Road, adjacent to Estero, inside a development where the residential towers, golf course, and other amenities are firmly private. A luxury developer building hundreds of multimillion-dollar residences chose to carve out the marina and guarantee it stays open to the public regardless of who owns the surrounding property in the future.
For Jim Weeks, who serves on the board of the Bonita Springs Historical Society, the emotional weight of that guarantee traced directly back to the original sale. "That was a sad day for me," he said of the moment the family let the property go. "Although we fought as a family and bickered about the future of the camp, we were still all family living here on the same patch of land our parents and grandparents originally settled." The covenant Wilson negotiated is, in effect, the thing that let that history stay attached to the place instead of being paved over by it.
What's Already Around It
If you're the kind of resident who'd actually use the new launch, there's now a reason to make an afternoon of it. Acqua Bistecca, the Italian-inspired waterfront restaurant next to the marina, opened to the public on January 21. It's the first Southwest Florida project for chef Michael Mina's MINA Group, built as a 7,500-square-foot space that seats 184 across indoor and outdoor areas designed by Meyer Davis Studio. The menu runs from pasta dishes in the low $20s to steaks that climb past $150, with caviar service presented tableside for anyone looking to make the trip feel like an occasion rather than a quick stop after a morning on the water.
None of this is part of the marina's public covenant. It's a private restaurant with its own hours and its own prices. But it means the newly reopened stretch of Coconut Road isn't just a boat ramp with a ship's store attached. It's a place where you can launch in the morning, spend the afternoon on Estero Bay, and sit down to dinner within a few hundred feet of where you tied off, all without needing a membership to any of it.
The Bigger Picture for Bonita Springs
Waterfront access in this part of Southwest Florida has mostly moved in one direction over the past decade: private docks, gated marinas, membership clubs. Saltleaf Marina runs the other way, and the fact that it's attached to one of the more expensive residential developments on this stretch of coast makes the covenant more notable, not less. The people building high-end residential towers on Estero Bay didn't need to leave a public door open. They did anyway, and they put it in writing.
That's the detail worth carrying home if you live nearby and haven't yet made the drive out to see it for yourself. The fence that sat at the end of Coconut Road for more than a decade is gone, and unlike a lot of what gets built along this coastline, what replaced it isn't going anywhere.
If you're curious what a home near this stretch of Estero Bay is actually worth now that public water access has returned to the neighborhood, The Lickley Group can walk you through what that means for the surrounding market. Request a Confidential Market Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
