In the Cape Coral Breeze, District 1 Councilmember Bill Steinke described the corner of SE 47th Terrace and SE 9th Place as "nothing but a vacant field here that was in relative disrepair," back before The Cove at 47th broke ground. Three years later, on a Friday morning in October 2025, he stood in front of a two-story parking garage on that same lot and cut a ribbon on it.
That garage sat mostly empty of restaurant-goers for a while, because the restaurants it was built to serve weren't all open yet. As of this fall, they finally are. The city's own economic development office now lists the ground floor of The Cove at 47th, all 19,000 square feet of it, as fully tenanted and operational. Four kitchens, one address, and a parking structure that turned out to be ahead of the businesses it was meant to support rather than a reaction to them.
If you've been driving past 870 SE 47th Terrace for the past two years watching this thing slowly fill in, here's what actually happened and what's actually there now.
From Groundbreaking to a Full Ground Floor
When Flaherty & Collins Properties broke ground on The Cove at 47th in August 2022, the plan called for 327 apartments and a ground floor of restaurants and retail. By the time leasing began in 2024, the city's own release projected the retail space would be complete by spring 2025, with each restaurant opening on its own construction schedule.
Spring 2025 came and went with only pieces of that promise delivered. By August 2025, coverage out of the Fort Myers News-Press was still describing Oak & Stone as targeting a November opening and Big Nick's BBQ as hoping for late September. Aqua Seafood, Steaks & Raw Bar, the anchor tenant with the rooftop bar, had slipped from its original timeline to a new target of late December.
None of those September or November dates held either. Big Nick's actually opened January 26, 2026, roughly a month later than even its revised December forecast. Aqua opened even further behind schedule, quietly serving its first customers on March 17, 2026, without a ribbon cutting or a press release, nearly a full year after its original spring 2025 target. The rooftop skybar above it didn't open until March 28, once the elevator certification cleared.
Taken together, the ground floor that was projected for completion by spring 2025 reached its final opening in March 2026, about a year after the original target. Each restaurant built out on its own construction schedule, and the full row is now open for the first time.
What's Actually Open
Here's the lineup as it stands, confirmed complete by the city:
| Restaurant | Concept | What's on the menu |
|---|---|---|
| Oak & Stone | Casual gourmet tavern with a self-pour tap wall | Nearly 50 rotating craft beers, artisan pizza, Philly cheesesteak egg rolls, weekend brunch |
| Seed & Bean Market | Florida's first cannabis café and CBD marketplace | Crab cakes, Belgian waffles, Cuban sandwiches, shrimp and grits, CBD-infused drinks |
| Big Nick's BBQ | Fast-casual Carolina and Texas-style barbecue | Brisket smoked 15 to 16 hours over black oak wood, tacos, smoked sausage, collard greens |
| Aqua Seafood, Steaks & Raw Bar | Fine dining with a rooftop bar | Whole fish dinners, raw bar, Mediterranean-leaning seafood and steak, nightly entertainment |
Big Nick's is the smallest footprint of the four, seating about 48 people, including 30 on its patio, and it's the second Southwest Florida location for a brand that started as a drive-thru-only spot in Fort Myers. Seed & Bean's Cape Coral location is its third, following Fort Myers and Venice, and at 2,800 square feet with 128 indoor seats plus up to 70 more outside, it's the largest of the three. Aqua is the fourth location for founder Gordon Stojkoski, who opened the original off Fifth Avenue South in Naples back in 2011.
One Kitchen Covers the Whole Day
Of the four, only Seed & Bean Market serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The other three are built around a single daypart or a narrower window: Oak & Stone leans into weekend brunch and evening tap-wall traffic, Big Nick's runs fast-casual counter service through the day but closes by evening, and Aqua is squarely a dinner and late-night destination built around its raw bar and rooftop.
That matters if you're trying to use this corner the way it's actually built to be used rather than the way a single "new restaurants!" headline makes it sound. If you're downtown at 9 a.m. wanting a sit-down breakfast, Seed & Bean is the only one of the four open for it. If you're looking for a Friday night with a rooftop view, Aqua is the one built for that, and it's the newest of the group by several months.
The Garage Beat the Restaurants to the Finish Line
The parking garage that Steinke and Mayor John Gunter cut the ribbon on in October 2025 has 125 spaces reserved for public use, on top of what serves the building's own residents. The rate structure is straightforward: the first hour is free, the second hour is $2, and each additional hour after that is $1, capping at $20 for a full day. Special event parking runs a flat $15.
What makes the timing notable is that this garage opened five months before Aqua, the last restaurant in the row, served its first meal. Gunter has pointed out that downtown Cape Coral had never had a parking structure before this one. The city built it ahead of the demand it was meant to serve, not in response to complaints about circling the block during a Friday dinner rush. For anyone who ate at Big Nick's or Oak & Stone in the winter of 2025 into early 2026, the garage was already there and mostly underused. It's caught up to the restaurant row now that the row itself is complete.
Where This Sits in the Bigger Picture
The Cove at 47th's four restaurants are a small slice of what's actually happening in South Cape. The city's Community Redevelopment Agency counts more than 60 restaurants and over 250,000 annual visitors across the broader district, a stretch that runs well beyond this one $103 million development. What The Cove offers that the rest of the corridor doesn't is the combination: four kitchens under one roof, a covered garage attached to the same block, and a walk of a couple hundred feet between all of it.
That combination took about a year longer to complete than first projected, and it is complete now.
If you're already living within walking distance of SE 47th Terrace and you're curious how a fully leased restaurant row down the street tends to show up in what buyers ask about on your block, that's a conversation worth having before you're the one selling. Mitchell Properties & Salty Hook Homes tracks these shifts corner by corner across Cape Coral. Schedule a consultation with Daniela Mitchell's team to talk through what it means for your specific address.
