After more than a two-year hiatus, a Boston-themed neighborhood sports bar is returning to the Naples market this fall.
Shea’s at Lansdowne Street operated for more than four years off Fifth Avenue South in downtown Naples until lease negotiations failed in June 2020. Owners Charlie and Teri Maurer finally found the right location to bring it back. The venue’s concept, look and feel are being resurrected, but this time it will be in North Naples, and the word “at” has been omitted to slightly shorten its name to Shea’s Lansdowne Street.
Shea’s will be moving into 6340 Naples Blvd, Suite 1, an end space vacated in early 2020 by the short-lived Newk’s Eatery. Shea’s will have three units and about 200 total seats in Sutton Place, the retail strip at Hollywood Boulevard’s main entrance into Regal Naples cinema.
“It’s really the center of Naples,” Charlie Maurer said. “It took me a long time to find something that was going to work. We looked at probably more than 25 places. We looked around a lot.”
They finally settled on the new location this spring. “We’re excited. There’s a lot of traffic on that road,” he said.
Newk’s layout and most of its equipment were not retainable for Shea’s décor and design. “It didn’t fit our style our methodology. Most of it we couldn’t use,” Maurer said. He is replacing all the glass windows on the end of the unit with overhead doors that open to an outdoor bar on a more than 2,200-square-foot patio. “For our model to work we have to have a big patio,” he said. “I always wanted to take an inside space and make it outside, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Even after spending more than 50 years in the building business as a general contractor and developer, Maurer is surprised by how challenging it is to obtain items such as doors and walk-in coolers, which take many months of waiting to secure. “Trying to get materials, it’s a trip,” he said.
Shea’s will feature many of the same architectural elements—brick, brass, chandeliers, a fireplace, booths—used at the original Shea’s and its big brother, Lansdowne Street, the bar and restaurant the Maurers have operated for 15 years at Bernwood Design Centre on U.S. 41 near Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs. “It will look the same,” Maurer said.
The menu and concept also will be identical. The brick, dark wood and stained glass are designed to create a cozy atmosphere with sports memorabilia from New England teams. Expect a replica of the big Green Monster, the nickname for the huge left-field wall and scoreboard at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. The actual Lansdowne Street in Boston is known for its downtown nightlife and also is the name of the fan zone at Fenway. Shea’s menu will feature signature deli sandwiches mostly named after roads and landmarks in Boston.
Shea’s has a much more personal meaning for the Maurer family, though. Shea Maurer was Charlie’s daughter, a loyal Red Sox fan and a fifth grader at Community School of Naples who died on Thanksgiving 2012 in an all-terrain vehicle accident less than two weeks before her 11th birthday. The venue that carries Shea’s name will honor her with a framed portrait of her inside.
A nod to Shea’s love of music, the new local destination will host live entertainment, mostly acoustical, four days a week. Maurer said he is just waiting for a permit to start the buildout of the new venue.
