On the night of Thursday, Oct. 29, Mayor Mike Gibson held a pair of oversized scissors in front of a new fountain on Old 41 Road. Children were already running through the spray, and a drone show lit the sky over the Halloween Stroll. The News-Press photo gallery from that evening shows a splash pad on its official opening night, a week after its fountain shows began.
The city also built Banyan Square, at 27381 Old 41 Road, to put on a show after dark. The water is choreographed to music, and the city's own description reads more like a stage than a playground. That shapes how the square fits into downtown evenings.
Two machines in one fountain
In the City of Bonita Springs announcement posted Oct. 22, the fountain runs in two modes with very different numbers.
| Daytime "play fountain" | Evening performance | |
|---|---|---|
| Spray height | Up to 6 feet | Up to 20 feet |
| Nozzle control | Play spray | Individually or in groups, for "dynamic spray effects and sculptural water patterns" |
| Lighting | Daylight | RGBW color lighting controlled by DMX, choreographed to music |
| Beyond the pad | None | 54 lights in the banyan, 4 in the oak, four 360-degree speakers around the perimeter |
In all, the system uses 74 lights and nozzles. The difference between 6 feet and 20 feet tells you what the night mode is for. A six-foot spray is sized for kids running through it. A twenty-foot jet, lit in color and timed to music played from speakers around the edge, is meant to be watched from a distance.
The trees are part of the show. The banyan that gives the parcel its name has 54 lights of its own, and the oak has four, all synchronized with the water. At night, the tree canopy becomes part of the light display.
For parents, one detail matters most. The city says the splash pad uses "an integrated filtration and chlorination system comparable to those found in community pools."
The first show was written for a city event
The city treated the first program as an event, not a test run. It choreographed a 10-minute Halloween show that played nightly during the Happy Haunts Halloween Stroll from Oct. 22 through Oct. 31, so people saw the fountain perform a week before the official opening. The ribbon cutting was then held in the middle of the stroll, at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, with remarks from city officials.
Coverage from the Fort Myers News-Press, syndicated through the USA TODAY Network, ran under the headline "Watch the waters waltz," and led with the light show as much as the splash pad. Since the city launched the fountain as part of one of its own events, the programmable night mode looks like a tool the city plans to use for future events.
Four years on one parcel
Banyan Square took several steps to build:
- May 18, 2022. City Council directed staff to engage the planning firm DPZ for conceptual plans covering the entire Banyan Tree parcel.
- Aug. 3, 2022. DPZ presented three schemes, including options that added downtown parking.
- Feb. 7, 2024. Council contracted with Wright Construction Group for a splash-pad concept and design plans.
- February 2025. A city update identified Wright's plans as the final design plans.
- April 2026. The city's downtown update grouped the splash pad with new restrooms as part of a push toward a more accessible, modern downtown, with a Winter 2026 opening target.
- Oct. 29, 2026. Ribbon cutting, a few weeks ahead of that winter target.
Florida Weekly also names Wright Construction Group as the builder.
Why the timing matters for downtown
The April 2026 update had a second part. It said Riverside Park would close starting the second week of April for its phase-two renovation. Downtown's usual gathering lawn would be out of use for much of the year, and the city named Liles Hotel Plaza and the green space between the hotel and the park as alternative event areas. The city's Summer 2026 downtown page set the Riverside Park construction window at April through November 2026.
So the city opened a new public space with built-in lights, speakers and water effects during the same months its main park was under construction. The Banyan Tree parcel and Riverside Park are both part of the same historic downtown cluster. The city's downtown brochure groups Riverside Park, the Historic Liles Hotel Plaza, the Lion's Pride playground and Island Park together, and places a banyan in the Liles Hotel area of Riverside Park. The banyan has been a downtown landmark for a long time. In 2007, the Naples Daily News reported that local historian Byron Liles traced the planting of a banyan to the 1915 home of Cordell Smith, as part of a walking tour of old Bonita.
The block around the fountain
The square sits among private venues along Old 41, and the address numbers show how close together they are. Everything below falls between 27300 and 27421 Old 41 Road:
- Historic Liles Hotel, 27300 Old 41 Road, home of the history center Florida Weekly has written about.
- Hide-A-Wai, 27306 Old 41 Road, with Thursday-through-Sunday hours. Gulfshore Business included it in its summer roundup of new Southwest Florida openings.
- Rooftop at Riverside, 27333 Old 41 Road.
- Banyan Square, 27381 Old 41 Road.
- Sugarshack Downtown, 27421 Old 41 Road, which posts daily hours and a full November music calendar.
For parking, the city points downtown visitors to on-street spaces and the Felt's Avenue lot. Anyone who used to park in the Bamboo Parking Lot should note that it stopped being available for public parking on Dec. 1, 2025.
Building a November evening around it
Sugarshack Downtown's November calendar includes three evenings that pair well with a stop at the fountain:
- Friday, Nov. 13: Satsang plays a free show from 7 to 10 p.m., with special guest Brian Ernst.
- Sunday, Nov. 15: Grateful Sunday runs all afternoon and evening, with Grateful Dub from 1 to 4 p.m. and Bearly Dead from 6 to 9 p.m.
- Wednesday, Nov. 18: Rock the Shack for Breakthrough T1D runs from 5 to 8 p.m., and the venue will donate 10 percent of event proceeds to the organization.
Nov. 13 is also the night Here Come the Mummies plays the Arts Bonita Performing Arts Center at 10150 Bonita Beach Road, at 7:30 p.m., with tickets listed at $69 to $79. That venue is a drive from Old 41, so it works as a separate plan from the fountain block rather than a stop on the same walk.
For details on visiting Banyan Square itself, the city lists its information line as 239-949-6262 in the opening announcement.
If an evening under the banyan has you thinking about how close you'd like to be to Old 41, KW Elevate Luxury knows downtown Bonita Springs block by block, from the Liles Hotel to Sugarshack. Contact Us, and we'll help you find the right place to start.
