Ask a longtime Pelican Heights resident what living two minutes from a Forbes Five-Star property gets you, and the answer usually involves proximity more than access. You can see the Coliseum Pool's tile work catch the afternoon light from certain streets. You know which gate the golf carts use. You've probably eaten at Caffè & Market more than once. What you may not have priced out lately is what it actually costs a non-guest to park there, or how much of the resort's best-known dining has quietly not existed for years. This is the year those two facts become impossible to ignore, because The Resort at Pelican Hill is mid-renovation, and the gaps in what "next door" has always meant are showing through the scaffolding.

The renovation calendar nobody posted on the gate

Marriott, which took over day-to-day operations at the resort on July 1, 2024, ahead of an eventual move to the St. Regis brand, announced a multi-phase refresh last fall that it's calling a renaissance. The golf work is the most disruptive piece for anyone who plays there. Golf course designer Brian Curley of Curley-Wagner Golf Design, working with contractor McDonald & Sons, is leading a renewal that includes full bunker reconstruction, tee-box leveling and resodding, cart-path repairs, and refreshed landscaping across the Tom Fazio-designed 36 holes. That work runs from November 3, 2025 through October 18, 2026, with specific holes closing on a rotating schedule for the better part of a year.

Inside, the Main Estate Lobby, The Great Room, and Caffè & Market began an aesthetic refresh on January 12, 2026, described as preserving the existing layout while updating finishes. The Spa Boutique and the Men's and Women's Lounges and Salon started their own round of what the resort calls discreet enhancements on June 1, 2026, with services continuing uninterrupted during weekday work hours. None of this touches Andrea, the resort's Northern Italian flagship, because Andrea has not run as a nightly restaurant since it closed at the start of the pandemic. It resurfaces occasionally for ticketed events, like the Italian Culinary Masters weekend in spring 2024 that brought in Gucci Osteria's Chef Mattia Agazzi, but there's no announced date for it to reopen as a regular dining room.

What "next door" has actually meant all along

Here's the part a construction year makes visible that a normal year tends to paper over. The resort's own posted policy sets local visitor valet at $50 with no purchase, or $25 with a validated purchase at Coliseum, Pelican Grill, Caffè & Market, Caffè 2, the Great Room Lounge, the Spa Boutique, the Golf Pro Shop, Allegra, or the Newsstand. Spa access itself carries a separate $15 valet rate for spa guests, and the spa is open daily but reserved for resort guests, not neighborhood residents dropping in for a treatment. Those aren't new construction-year restrictions. They're the resort's standing local access terms, and they mean the "neighbor" relationship between Pelican Heights and the property next door was never as casual as the view suggests. A renovation year just makes the calculation obvious: pay $50 to valet in for a coffee, or drive to something that doesn't charge admission to your own zip code.

The free amenity that's actually behind your fence line

That something is Buck Gully Reserve, and it borders Pelican Heights directly. The reserve covers roughly 254 acres of protected canyon owned by the City of Newport Beach and managed in partnership with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, with a trail system that loops about three miles through the gully and a stream that runs year-round. It's open every day, dawn to dusk, for the entire twelve months the resort's golf courses have holes closed on a rotating schedule, and it doesn't charge valet.

The reserve does have rules, and they're worth knowing before you go rather than after:

• Dogs are not permitted anywhere in the reserve. The city cites both wildlife disturbance and increased snake-bite risk to pets off leash on narrow trail sections.
• E-bikes are not allowed. Standard bikes are permitted but travel one direction, uphill, so hikers aren't sharing the trail with fast downhill traffic.
• There are no restrooms on the trail itself. The most practical staging point is the Newport Coast Shopping Center at 21181 Newport Coast Dr, which has facilities before you set out.
• The reserve is open daily from dawn to dusk, with docent-led hikes and volunteer trail programs run periodically by the Irvine Ranch Conservancy.

For a Pelican Heights household, this is the resource that was already yours before the renovation started, and it doesn't close for bunker reconstruction. The panoramic stretch of trail near the top of the gully, where the canyon opens toward Newport Harbor and Catalina on a clear day, has been there the entire time the resort's amenity fees have been in place. It just wasn't the thing anyone mentioned first.

The second alternative is a short drive north, not a resort membership

The dining gap left by Andrea's long closure has an answer too, and it isn't inside the gate. Fashion Island, a short drive north past Corona del Mar Village, is in the middle of a restaurant wave landing through 2026. The family-owned Telefèric Barcelona Restaurant Group is bringing its tapas and paella concept to the center this year, and Amalfi, a chef-driven Italian restaurant, is opening within Fashion Island as part of the same cycle. For a resident who used to think of Andrea as the closest special-occasion Italian table, that role is effectively relocating up the road, to a restaurant that will actually take reservations instead of waiting on an undated reopening.

Fashion Island's operators appear to be leaning into these kinds of family-legacy and chef-driven imports at the same moment the peninsula fills up with independent concepts closer to the water, which means the center is functioning less like a mall food court this year and more like a genuine dining destination in its own right. That shift matters for Pelican Heights specifically because it closes the gap that Andrea's absence left open. You no longer need resort access to get a proper Italian dinner out. You need a dinner reservation at Amalfi.

What actually changes, and what doesn't reset when the scaffolding comes down

The golf course work has a stated end date of October 18, 2026. The lobby and Caffè & Market refresh was scoped to preserve the existing layout, so it should read as familiar once finished. But the valet structure, the guests-only spa policy, and Andrea's uncertain status aren't construction artifacts that resolve when the last bunker gets resodded. Those are standing terms of what "next door" means for anyone who isn't a paying guest, and they were true well before this renovation cycle started.

What the renovation year actually does is put a spotlight on a fact that was already sitting in Pelican Heights' backyard. The amenity that costs nothing and never closes for a golf course refresh, Buck Gully, has been behind the property line the whole time. The dining option filling the gap Andrea left, Amalfi at Fashion Island, is arriving this year regardless of what the resort's own calendar looks like. Neither requires an amenity fee or a room key. For a household weighing what this pocket of Newport Coast actually delivers day to day, that's the more useful map to carry into the fall than the one the resort hands out at the front gate.

If you're weighing what a home in this pocket of Newport Coast is actually worth given how its surrounding amenities are shifting this year, Michael Balliet can walk you through it. Request Private Client Access to get a grounded, finance-informed read on the neighborhood before you decide anything.