Downtown Bonita Springs—The Best New Place to Live and Play in SWFL (2024)

Steps off Old 41’s paver-stone stretch, a flurry of white umbrellas and rattan chairs grant access to the string-light adorned Downtown Coffee and Wine Company. Java-juiced crowds of neighbors and friends shuffle in and out, pausing at the sidewalk to greet a familiar face or claiming a cream-colored concrete table to soak up good company before jetting off to work. The staple Downtown Bonita Springs haunt—built out of a minimalistic structure from the first half of the 1900s—feels more tenured than its age. Owners Brandon and Caitlin Schewe opened the doors just five years ago, but for Downtown Bonita Springs today, that may as well be a lifetime. “The coffee shop helped change people’s view of the area,” Caitlin says. “They started to believe that this could be something cool, something new.”

The successful opening of Downtown Coffee sent up a signal flare to other young, like-minded Southwest Floridians. Downtown Bonita was on the precipice of a long-awaited renaissance. Since 2019, more than a dozen small businesses, ranging from restaurants, bars and breweries to boutiques, salons and spas, have joined the ranks of legacied stalwarts, like Survey Cafe, Shangri-La Springs and Maria’s Restaurant. “We go to Maria’s a lot for Taco Tuesdays,” Brandon says. “I used to show up there with like 20 to 30 of our friends back in the days when we were just starting out with the coffee shop.”

Brandon and a legion of other locals also flock to El Gran Taco Loco, the stand behind the town’s catch-all for snacks, dried chilis and pantry essentials, Benson’s Grocery. Benson’s, like most of the beauty parlors, antique stores and shops that fill the main drag storefronts, has long served the area’s backbone Hispanic community.

Tucked next to a strip mall tattoo parlor, Tortilleria Jalisco presses out hot tortillas ready to order, and about half of the signage downtown reads in Spanish. Other sites reach further back to Bonita Springs’ roots as a pioneer settlement-turned-winter retreat. The charm shines through attractions like Old 41’s oldest home (and base for the Bonita Springs Historical Society), The McSwain House, a 1915 shotgun-style structure built from locally cut and milled wood. The restored home remains open daily for tours, and the backyard butterfly garden—perfect for a leisurely afternoon with a book—is always open to the public. Likewise, the quirky, 1930s roadside animal attraction, the Wonder Gardens, maintains its Old Florida flair with its tea house and wrought iron aviary pavilions that flutter with tropical plumage. A motley crew of boaters still take to the Imperial River every Christmas for a parade of dubiously decked-out vessels. And, the bellow of church bells rings through the afternoon daily.

The original recipe for Downtown Bonita Springs remains, but it’s taken on an undeniable fusion flavor. Ceremony Brewing, Zach Smith’s artisanally inclined punk rock brewery with a penchant for skeletal logos, hosts monthly ‘emo nights’ that draw loads of millennial and Gen Z beer lovers. Chris Magnus—owner of the new food truck park-meets-rooftop bar, Rooftop at Riverside—serves local history-themed co*cktails and hosts ‘Reggae Summer Sundays.’ “If you look at our Bonita Springs slogan—Small Town Charm, Big Bright Future—I think that’s something we’ve got to keep,” Chris says. He credits the city leaders with minding caution amid expansion—this isn’t the place to get your Starbucks fix. While the city of Bonita Springs booms with big box stores and high rises, downtown stands separate, unique. “It still feels like a pretty small town,” Chris says.

Many of the entrepreneurial newcomers, like Brandon and Caitlin, have reclaimed once-abandoned structures, adding a distinctly youthful, bohemian vibe to the eccentric town. Others capitalize on new structures from developers like Kyle Moran, of Moran Kennedy, or Steve Hovland, the man behind downtown’s buzz-worthy retail center, Entrada Plaza. The plaza on the corner of Old 41 and Bonita Beach Road is home to croissant-haven and haute coffee shop Wolfmoon Bakery; intimate and eclectic tapas joint The Bohemian; local natural skincare startup Cleansing Essentials; and the trendy, plush-couch-filled women’s boutique Love, Celine. “These are all, importantly, local entrepreneurs,” Kyle says.

With each new restaurant opening, bar or brewery launch and boutique offering, you can find a young, passionate Southwest Floridian at the helm; most fall between their 20s and 40s. Many—like Stephen and Danielle Dyer, of the three-year-old, rustic-polished Chartreuse Craft co*cktail Lounge—have long called Bonita home and simply wanted to serve the community they loved. Some—like Jennifer Kallstrom, the 23-year-old owner of Love, Celine—are Neopolitans who turned northward to launch their eclectic ventures. “When I was looking for where to open, I just kept coming back to Old 41. I don’t know why—it just felt right,” Jennifer says. “It’s growing so much.” Others, like the guys behind Sugarshack Downtown have spent years growing and evolving right alongside the town.

Long loved for their highly popular, streamable jam sessions, Sugarshack blossomed out of cofounder and musician Eddie Kopp’s 1940s house, a few blocks from downtown, a decade ago. The thick, subtropical setting of his Bonita backyard has had as much to do with the brand’s growth as anything else. Viewers loved seeing their favorite bands play unplugged, in a lush, unmanicured setting with the faint sound of crickets and frogs in the background. There was no question on where they’d plant their flag when the group was ready to expand. Now, Sugarshack is gearing up to open the kind of music venue the team has long hoped for in Southwest Florida—a place to draw local bands like Rock Republic and West Wave alongside the contemporary touring artists they like to work with at their backyard sessions, those who have hopscotched straight from Tampa to Miami for years. The mellow joint will sit somewhere between a gastropub and a mini-amphitheater and is expected to bring a much-needed boost to the local music scene. “Bonita is receptive to new ideas; it’s a hidden gem,” Eddie says. “To be a part of the growth of Bonita and this kind of revitalization of downtown is really special and really important to me and my team. We’ve been trying to put Bonita on the map for the past 10 years with Sugarshack, and I think this next chapter is going to do that to the biggest extent.”

Despite the potential for competition amongst the businesses sprouting like mushrooms in damp soil, there’s an undeniable camaraderie among the energetic, impassioned crowd. Before launching Wolfmoon in 2023, owner Clara Fasciglione sold her now-famous croissants at Downtown Coffee and Wine Company; Love, Celine’s Jennifer frequents Brandon and Caitlin’s next-door, upscale restaurant, The Bohemian; Chartreuse and The Bohemian share the talents of Southwest Florida’s premier bartender Stanley Worrell—the list goes on. The entrepreneurs advise one another, promote one another, and occasionally, they schedule a booze trolley together to hop from one of their spots to the next (keep an eye on the joints’ social media for the heads-up on dates and tickets).

And, there’s more on the horizon. This fall, Naples health and fitness devotee Robert Sorenson opens the doors to Sauna House—a modern bathhouse with communal sauna spaces, cold-plunge pools and a nonalcoholic bar with local kombuchas and teas. Brandon and Caitlin are cooking up their third Downtown Bonita hotspot, the Canary Club. Expected to open sometime next year, the restaurant hones in on the lunch crowd with wood-fired sourdough pizzas, spun with the fresh, spice-filled flavors found at the intersection of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines. Zach is working with his landlord to renovate the existing structures around Ceremony and add two new restaurants to the shady roadside corridor, and Kyle is finalizing plans for six new eateries and libations hubs that should trickle into the Downtown District over the next five years. The developer has been on a mission to coax out the area’s potential since moving to Bonita Springs in 1993. Back then, he says, the area was little more than an industrial wasteland. Now, Kyle says “Downtown Bonita Springs has tremendous potential and appears well on its way to becoming a vibrant destination for the three Cs: culture, commerce and community.”

The growth of downtown is not just a matter of new businesses opening, it’s about people: the ones popping open folding chairs to catch a concert in Riverside Park; the families pointing out hawk nests on their walks down the Bonita Estero Rail Trail; the couples launching kayaks into the Imperial River from Riverside Park’s canopied inlet; the kids ordering ice cream at the 15-year-old For Heaven Shakes Ice Cream; and the thousands who flock to the streets of downtown for the annual Independence Day parade. More than 20,000 people have moved to Bonita Springs in the last 20 years, nearly doubling the city’s population and driving more traffic downtown. The city, county and private investors have pumped millions of dollars into improved infrastructure over the last decade, most visibly in the paver-patterned roundabouts, expanded pedestrian sidewalks and crossings, event- and kayaker-friendly green spaces like Riverside Park and generous parking that encourages people to ditch their car and walk or hop on one of the area’s pay-to-ride e-scooters. It’s all part of a greater strategy to redefine the image of Downtown Bonita Springs, a once-burgeoning community center stripped of its through-traffic commerce with the redrawing of Highway 41 in 1977. “When that very disruptive change happened, a lot of downtown was essentially abandoned,” Kyle says.

Zach, a former Naples school teacher, moved to Bonita back in 2012 alongside the throngs of young families who’ve descended on the area over the last decade. “I quickly realized I was not alone,” the brewmaster says. “A lot of the people up here in Bonita are younger working-class families like us.” By the time he launched Ceremony in 2022, choosing a spot in Downtown Bonita was a no-brainer. “It’s just my love for the community,” he says. “I didn’t want it to be anywhere else.” Rooftop at Riverside’s Chris isn’t surprised that the area is drawing families like Zach’s. He grew up around Downtown Bonita, and when he talks about his memories, a familiar wash of nostalgia and anticipation colors his eyes. “I played Bonita League baseball; my dad coached me. Then, my kids played, and I coached them,” he says. Recently, the Magnus family hosted a birthday party for their twins and invited a disparate group of friends from the area. “We thought, heck, we’re going to have to introduce everyone,” Chris says with a laugh. He was wrong. Almost everyone had crossed paths. Some had taught other’s children, others had shared a few stools at the bar or were longtime friends. “It was wonderful,” Chris says. “There’s just something about Bonita.”