Topped out and selling on Estero Bay, Bonita Springs, FL
The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Estero Bay North Tower
5200 Seagrass Boulevard, Bonita Springs
112 residences over 22 storeys, topped out in September 2026, delivering 2027. Its twin next door is already recorded, occupied and folioed unit by unit, so there is real price evidence one building over. The whole record is below.
- Address
- 5200 Seagrass Boulevard
- Size
- 112 residences, 22 storeys
- Delivery
- Expected 2027
- Tax rate
- 13.1384 mills
At a glance
the North Tower fast facts
Every figure below is read from the recorded plat and the parcel's legal description, the city's own council record for the zoning amendment, the county's emergency addressing file, both roll layers scraped separately and never averaged, the county's adopted millage book authority by authority, the federal flood records queried by whole parcel rather than by point, or the county's hazard layers, with a control behind each result. Where an official layer returns nothing we say whether that is a real negative or a hole in the data, because on this parcel it is both, in different places.
- Record address
- 5200 Seagrass Boulevard, Bonita Springs, FL 34134
- Also called
- Bayview North Tower, a Condominium in the state file, Bayview on Estero Bay in the city's zoning record
- Master plan
- Saltleaf on Estero Bay
- Size
- 112 residences, 22 storeys
- Status
- Topped out September 2026. Delivery expected 2027
- Municipality
- City of Bonita Springs, not Estero and not unincorporated
- Sibling tower
- Recorded, opened and occupied since spring 2026
- One condominium or two
- Two. Separate entities, declarations and associations
- Recorded yet
- No. This tower's declaration has not recorded
- Tax rate
- 13.1384 mills on the 2025 roll
- Community development district
- None, and no municipal service taxing unit either
- Fire district levy
- 2.2880 mills, about 17 per cent of the bill
- Flood
- Mapped inside the special flood hazard area, base flood elevation eleven feet
- Evacuation level
- A, the first zone ordered out
- Current asking prices on the unsold residences
- Not published yet
Not published yet
Location: see 5200 Seagrass Boulevard on the map. Get pricing on the residences still available. Figures carry the dates shown and are subject to change.
Who built this, and what was here
A fish camp from 1942, four names for one building, and a permit file the public cannot read
Start with the address, because the marketed one and the recorded one are not the same. The county's parcel record and its emergency addressing file both put this tower on Seagrass Boulevard, with its twin at the adjoining number. Much of the marketing and a good deal of press gives a Coconut Road address, which is the sales gallery and the master plan's front door. A search on the marketed address returns nothing about this parcel.
The name is the same story four times over, and this project passes a test another one in this series failed last month. The recorded plat is itself named Bayview. The city's zoning ordinance names the development Bayview on Estero Bay. The sibling tower is recorded under a Bayview name that appears in the appraiser's own unit legal descriptions. And the county's addressing file assigns this parcel to a Seagrass Bayview community. Four independent public records, no marketing required.
One honest caveat, and it is the reason this page prints every name. Nothing recorded anywhere yet carries this tower's own condominium name. That exact string exists so far only in the state registration file, because the declaration has not recorded. What the recorded evidence supports is the north tower of the Bayview plat, which is the same building under a name a buyer would never type.
On jurisdiction, two things are commonly got wrong. This is inside the City of Bonita Springs, not Estero and not unincorporated Lee, confirmed against the city limits layer. But the county's own zoning, future land use and zoning case layers all return nothing here, because the county does not maintain zoning inside a municipality. Anyone describing this site's zoning from county records will get a false negative.
The heritage of the site is the best thing in the file, and it is nothing like what we expected. This ground was Weeks Fish Camp, a commercial boat launch, fish camp and tackle shop open to the public from 1942 and run by one family for generations until it sold in 2014. The sponsor bought the thirty acre site in spring 2018. The parcel still sits inside the legacy mobile home planned development approved for that fish camp in 1991, which is a nice fossil to find under a 22 storey tower.
And the launch did not simply disappear. The master plan's marina now occupies the historic boat launch site, and the public launch was reopened. The scheme itself also changed along the way: in autumn 2023 the council approved a zoning amendment replacing 75 foot assisted living buildings with townhomes and carriage homes capped at 45 feet, leaving the two towers, already under construction, unchanged.
Now the assumption this page has to head off, because it is the obvious one and it is wrong. This is not a Hurricane Ian rebuild. The site was acquired in 2018 and cleared before the storm, and the certified roll carries zero buildings and a year built of zero on the predecessor tract. There was no pre-storm structure here to be substantially damaged. It is new construction on cleared land, designed to current code from the outset.
Where the record goes quiet is the part a buyer most wants. The city's permitting portal has no route an anonymous member of the public can use. We tested it properly: the search endpoint exists but rejects every anonymous request, and the legacy address the city itself still links has been dead for some time. So the construction record, the inspection history and the certificate of occupancy exist and are public records, but you cannot look them up. Ask in writing.
Two smaller record notes worth carrying into your own checking. The county's building footprint layer returns nothing for this parcel, which is not a problem but a lag, consistent with a tower that topped out in September 2026. And the addressing file holds more addressed points than there are declared residences, which most likely reflects guest suites or cabanas that carry addresses without being units.
Take these four to the sales gallery: the full permit, inspection and certificate of occupancy file, since you cannot pull it yourself; when the declaration is expected to record and what the budget and reserve schedule look like; what the south tower's owners are actually paying now that it has been running for a season; and which residences remain and at what price.
What this actually costs
No district, a big fire levy, and two rolls describing two different parcels
The headline is favourable and it inverts what we expected walking in. There is no community development district on this parcel and no municipal service taxing unit either. The county's taxing unit layer returns nothing for the parcel polygon and the district's millage schedule contains no district line. On a master planned coastal development that is not the norm.
The real special district cost is somewhere most buyers never look. An independent fire district levies 2.2880 mills here, about seventeen per cent of a total 2025 certified rate of 13.1384 mills across twelve authorities. That single line is larger than the city's own operating levy several times over. The city takes 0.8470 mills; the county takes 3.7623; the schools take 5.3190 between two lines.
And there is a boundary oddity attached to it that is worth one sentence. The parcel is inside the City of Bonita Springs but is served by the Estero fire district rather than the Bonita Springs one, whose own levy is materially lower. The city boundary and the fire district boundary simply do not coincide here. The 2026 millage book had not been published at the time of research, so treat any 2026 figure quoted at you as an estimate.
On homestead, this page has to correct something this series assumed. The combined exemption here is $51,411, which is exactly the figure confirmed repeatedly across Sarasota County. That is not a coincidence and it is not a county policy choice. The structure is set by state law and constitution, and the only county to county variation is which local assessments fall outside it. Do not let anyone present it as a local advantage.
Now the warning that matters most if you are about to quote a number. The county's two published layers do not merely differ in vintage here; they describe two different parcels. The certified 2025 layer still shows the pre-replat tract of roughly twelve and a half acres carrying both towers under a single address range. The 2026 working layer shows the carved-out tract for this tower alone. Neither is wrong. They are a replat caught mid-cycle.
And the working layer's dollar figure should not be repeated yet. It carries an identical just value on this tract and on the sibling tract that is nearly three times larger, which has the signature of a value copied across sibling parcels mid-cycle rather than two independent appraisals landing on the same number. The 2026 roll has not certified. We are not publishing a value for this parcel until it does, and neither should anyone else.
What is solid is that nothing is exempt and nothing is built, yet. The parcel carries no exemptions of any kind, because it is developer held and still unimproved on the roll. Once the declaration records and each residence gets its own folio, the bill you care about is that residence's assessment at this rate, not the land figure.
The practical version: the rate is knowable and moderate for a coastal city, there is no district assessment layered on top, and the fire levy is the line to understand. The millage book states in its own footer that it excludes non ad valorem special assessments, a solid waste assessment applies here, and its rate was not established, so a real bill will be higher than any millage calculation.
Where the leverage is
A twin next door that is already recorded, occupied and folioed unit by unit
Almost every tower this series writes about before delivery has the same problem: there is nothing to price it against. This one is the exception, and the exception is worth real money.
Here is what exists a hundred feet away. The south tower is the same 22 storeys, the same 112 residences, the same plat, the same design team and the same sponsor. Its declaration recorded in spring 2026, it opened and took residents that season, and its units now sit on the tax roll individually, each with its own legal description and its own assessment. That is a live, public, unit by unit comparable set.
They are still two separate condominiums, and you should hold both ideas at once. Different ownership entities, different state registrations, separate declarations and separate associations. Your board, your budget, your reserves and your insurance will be this tower's alone, and the south tower's documents are evidence about what to expect rather than documents that will govern you. Read them anyway.
Because that is exactly where the asymmetry is. The south tower has now run through a full season of operation. Its budget, its reserve assumptions, its insurance renewal and its actual assessments are a year of real data about a building identical to the one you are buying into, and none of it is going to be handed to you across a sales desk. It is the closest thing to a dress rehearsal a pre-delivery buyer ever gets.
That is precisely where representation earns its keep. An agent who has pulled the south tower's recorded declaration, its folio by folio assessments and what its units have actually traded at, floor by floor and stack by stack, can price a residence in this tower against its own twin without leaving money on the table. Nobody selling you the unit is going to assemble that table for you.
Two more pieces of leverage most buyers never think to ask about. Turnover has not happened here and cannot until residences are conveyed, so the developer will control the association through the first budget and the first reserve decisions. And at 22 storeys this building clears the structural integrity reserve study requirement and the milestone inspection regime outright, with no small building exemption available to it. The milestone clock runs thirty years from a certificate of occupancy that has not issued.
What to get in writing before you make an offer: which residences remain and at what price; the south tower's current budget, assessments and insurance position as the closest available guide; the expected recording date for this tower's declaration; the full permit and inspection file, since the city will not show it to you; whether a structural integrity reserve study has been commissioned; and the expected turnover date.
A twin tower's worth of public evidence, and a building delivering next year
Ask what is available, and ask for the permit file the city will not publish.
The area
One flood zone on the parcel, a county layer with no data in it at all, and a postcode that took Ian
The flood finding here is clean, and we queried the whole parcel rather than a point before saying so. The federal layer returns exactly one zone across the entire property, a coastal floodplain designation with a base flood elevation of eleven feet. No velocity zone, no floodway and no primary frontal dune anywhere on the parcel. Velocity zones at thirteen and fourteen feet begin a short distance west, between the site and the bay.
One thing most summaries leave out, and it is recent. That designation is the product of a map revision which became effective in autumn 2024. The flood mapping at this address was rewritten after Hurricane Ian and before the towers rose, so today's answer is a post-storm answer rather than an old one. The tower was designed against the current picture.
The county's own layers cannot help you here at all, and you should know why. Both of the county's flood map layers return a single placeholder polygon covering the whole city with every flood attribute empty. They do not disagree with the federal layer, they carry no value whatsoever. Anyone reading a flood zone for a Bonita Springs address off county records gets nothing back and may easily misread that silence as no zone at all.
On the wave action line, this county behaves opposite to its neighbour to the north. Here the county publishes a layer named directly for the moderate wave action line, and it does not cross the parcel; the nearest mapped line is about 190 metres west. Meanwhile the federal lines layer carries no wave action line here at all, so the two disagree about whether it is even published. We report both rather than picking.
The storm answer is the harder one and it is unambiguous. This address carries evacuation level A, the first ordered out, falls inside the category one surge envelope, and the county classifies it as coastal high hazard. Natural ground measures about four feet against a base flood of eleven, so roughly seven feet of rise was required from existing grade. Being landward of the velocity line and being first out are different measurements and both are true.
The postcode claim record is large, and we are going to frame it carefully rather than dramatically. This postcode has recorded about 2,711 federal flood insurance claims and roughly $273.1 million paid across the life of the programme. September 2022 alone accounts for 64.3 per cent of every claim ever filed and 89.1 per cent of every dollar ever paid, while calendar 2022 as a whole accounts for 65.0 and 89.5 per cent. Those two are different measures and only eighteen claims separate them.
Here is why that figure needs a caveat rather than a headline. This postcode also covers the barrier shore that took the worst of that storm, and this tower is landward of the velocity line on a bay rather than on the Gulf beach. The postcode's history describes the postal area, not this parcel. The 2024 season was the second storm year at 393 claims and about $22.1 million, and since then the record is nearly empty: one claim in 2025 paying nothing, and none recorded through the data freeze in 2026.
On schools we are deliberately not going to name any. This district does not use named attendance boundaries. It assigns by lettered proximity and choice zones, and families choose among the schools serving their zone, so the layers return zone codes rather than school names. Every portal listing for this address will name three campuses anyway. Ask the district.
What you need to know
Buying from a developer with someone on your side
Representation costs you nothing and the timing is the catch: in a developer sales gallery your agent generally has to be with you or named at your very first contact for the registration to stand. Sort it out before you call.
The case for it here is an unusual mix of very good evidence and very closed records. A full sibling building's worth of recorded declarations, folios and assessments is public and checkable. The permit file, the inspection history and the certificate of occupancy for this tower are not published to the public at all in this city, and this tower's own declaration does not exist yet. Someone should be working both ends.
Know what the statute gives you. On a developer sale you are entitled to the prospectus and the condominium documents, and you have a rescission right measured in days from the later of signing or delivery of those documents. At 112 residences this building is comfortably past the threshold that compels an association website too, once the association exists. That is a real ongoing advantage over the small buildings elsewhere in this series.
On deposits the protection is narrower than most buyers assume. The first ten per cent is held in escrow. Above ten per cent the statute permits the developer to use the money for construction once work has begun, and here the structure is already topped out. We did not search Florida regulatory enforcement records or civil dockets for any builder, developer, contractor or land-holding entity, so read the absence of any such note as unchecked, not clean. Get an independent inspection of the specific residence before closing, use the warranty window while it lasts, and read the limited warranty before you sign.
Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by LB Estero Bay Investments II, any homebuilder, any developer of the North Tower, any hotel or residence brand whose name appears on this page, the City of Bonita Springs, or Lee County. The developer is identified here because it is the owner of record in the county property records, which is a statement of fact and not a representation of any relationship. Community names, brand names and marks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. Subdiview is operated by a real estate broker licensed in Illinois. We are not your agent, we do not represent you, and we perform no real estate brokerage services in this state. No one at Subdiview is licensed in this state. If you join an interest list, your information is referred to a real estate professional licensed in the state where the property is located, who will contact you directly. We are compensated by that professional's brokerage, not by you. Pricing, plans, inventory, district, tax, flood and approval details on this page carry the dates shown, are as published, proposed or reported rather than committed, and are subject to change without notice.
Questions and answers
the North Tower FAQ
What is the actual address, and why does the marketing use a different one?
The address of record is 5200 Seagrass Boulevard, Bonita Springs. Much of the marketing and a good deal of press coverage gives a Coconut Road address instead, which is the sales gallery and the master plan's front door rather than this building. The county's parcel record and its emergency addressing file both carry this tower at Seagrass Boulevard, with the sibling tower at the adjoining number on the same street, and where the county and the press disagree about an address the county wins every time. This matters if you intend to check anything yourself: a search on the marketed address will not return this parcel, its tax record or its flood mapping.
Is this one building or two?
Two, and the distinction is legal rather than cosmetic. The north and south towers share a plat, a master plan, a street, a design team and a sponsor, and they are each 22 storeys and 112 residences. But they sit on adjoining tracts held by two different ownership entities, they carry two different state project registrations, and they will be two separate condominiums with separate declarations and separate associations. The south tower's association is already registered and its declaration recorded in spring 2026. Treat them as a phased pair under one master plan, not as one condominium, because your assessments, your reserves, your insurance and your board will all be the north tower's alone.
Is it built?
Structurally yes, legally not yet. The tower broke ground in spring 2025 and topped out at 22 storeys in September 2026, with delivery expected in 2027, which is about sixteen months from groundbreaking to top-out. But the declaration of condominium has not recorded, no unit has ever been conveyed, and the county's own building footprint layer still returns nothing for this parcel because it has not captured the structure yet. The roll agrees: the parcel is still carried as vacant commercial with no buildings and no year built. So every document that attaches to a finished condominium, the declaration, the budget, the reserve schedule and the association, does not exist for this tower today.
What does it cost to own here, beyond the price?
The certified 2025 rate for this district is 13.1384 mills across twelve authorities. There is no community development district on this parcel and no municipal service taxing unit either, which is a genuinely favourable finding and the opposite of what we expected going in. What there is instead is a large independent fire district levy at 2.2880 mills, about seventeen per cent of the whole bill, and it comes with an oddity worth knowing: the parcel sits inside the City of Bonita Springs but is served by the Estero fire district rather than the Bonita Springs one, whose own levy is lower. The city boundary and the fire district boundary do not coincide here. The 2026 rate book had not been published at the time of research, so do not accept a 2026 figure yet. On homestead, the combined exemption is $51,411, which is exactly what it is in Sarasota County, because that structure is fixed by state law rather than chosen by any county.
What is the flood and storm position?
Better than the postcode's reputation, and we tested it against the whole parcel rather than a point. The federal flood layer returns exactly one zone across the entire property, a coastal floodplain designation with a base flood elevation of eleven feet, and there is no velocity zone, no floodway and no primary frontal dune anywhere on the parcel. Velocity zones at thirteen and fourteen feet begin a short distance west, between the site and the bay, so the tower is landward of that line rather than on it. One detail most summaries miss: the flood mapping at this address is the product of a map revision that became effective in autumn 2024, so it was rewritten after Hurricane Ian and before the towers rose. The storm side is less comfortable. This address carries evacuation level A, the first ordered out, it falls inside the category one surge envelope, and the county classifies it as coastal high hazard. Natural ground measures about four feet against a base flood of eleven, so roughly seven feet of rise was required from existing grade.
What should I be most careful about here?
Four things. First, you cannot check this building's permit file. The city's permitting portal has no route an anonymous member of the public can use, and the legacy address the city itself still links is dead, so the construction record, the inspection history and the certificate of occupancy all sit behind a login. Ask for them in writing. Second, do not quote the parcel's assessed value at anyone yet: the county's working roll carries the identical figure on this tract and on a sibling tract nearly three times larger, which has the signature of a value copied across mid-cycle, and the 2026 roll has not certified. Third, nothing recorded anywhere yet carries this tower's own condominium name; that name exists so far only in the state registration file. Fourth, this is new construction on land that was already cleared years before Hurricane Ian, so anyone selling you an Ian rebuild story about this address is inventing one.
Before you make an offer
Get your inside track on the North Tower
We will connect you with a real estate professional licensed in Florida who represents you rather than the seller, who can register you before your first contact with the sales gallery, and who will get you what this page could not: current asking prices on the residences still available, the permit and inspection file the city does not publish, the expected recording date for the declaration, the budget and reserve schedule, and what the identical tower next door is actually costing its owners today.
It costs nothing, creates no brokerage relationship by itself, and does not obligate you to anything.