If a neighbor has told you the Buccaneer finally reopened, they are right and they are also leaving something out. Which part of the Buccaneer they mean changes the answer completely.
The marina and restaurant complex at 142 Lake Drive has been mid-renovation for long enough that "reopening" has started to feel like a rumor that never quite resolves. The property dates to 1956 and has carried the kind of local mythology that only a decades-old waterfront address earns, including the claim that Ernest Hemingway once called it home. One industry write-up described the restaurant's return as the end of a seven-year makeover, which tells you how long this particular comeback has been in motion. Seven years is not a renovation timeline. It is closer to a generation of a business changing hands, changing plans, and finally landing somewhere.
Here is the part worth knowing before you make a plan around it: the Buccaneer is not reopening once. It is reopening in three separate stages, on three different clocks, and only one of those clocks has actually finished ticking.
A Landmark With Two Addresses
Before getting into what is open, it helps to untangle a small geography quirk that trips up even people who have lived here for years. The Buccaneer's own marketing describes it as the oldest marina on Singer Island, but the mailing address is Palm Beach Shores. Both are true at once. Palm Beach Shores sits at the southern tip of Singer Island, so a business can carry a Palm Beach Shores street address while still legitimately claiming Singer Island as its identity. It is the kind of overlap that only makes sense once you have walked the causeway and seen where one name gives way to the other, and it is worth knowing if you are trying to figure out exactly where this landmark sits relative to your own block.
Three Reopenings, Not One
The confusion around whether the Buccaneer is "open" comes from treating a three-part project as a single event. It is not.
The kitchen came first. The Buccaneer Waterfront Bar & Grill reopened under Chef Paul Niedermann, a Hell's Kitchen winner, after that seven-year renovation stretch. By the middle of this year, reviewers were describing it as having delighted guests for nearly a year, which puts the restaurant's actual reopening somewhere in the middle of last year, well ahead of everything else on the property.
The docks came next. The marina itself, with a rebuilt floating dock system, only became fully operational more recently. Slip holders and boaters describe it as newly finished rather than newly opened, a distinction that matters if you tried to dock here a year ago and were turned away.
The rooms are still the reason the construction never fully stopped. Resort accommodations and sixteen luxury waterfront residences remain under development, with the broader transformation aimed at completion this fall. This is the piece still generating the noise and the scaffolding.
The dining room reopened first. The docks came next. The rooms are still the whole reason the crane trucks keep showing up.
What You Can Actually Do There This Week
For dinner, the Buccaneer Waterfront Grill is fully running and worth treating as a real option rather than a maybe. The menu leans into seafood with a few globally inspired detours: crab cake, lamb lollipops, a brick oven lobster elote pizza, shrimp cocktail with East Coast oysters, and a rotation of grouper, flounder, and snapper depending on the catch. Dessert regulars mention a key lime pie finished with mango puree. The dining room has a nautical, map-inspired interior, and more than one visitor has called out a restored mural behind the bar as worth a look on its own. Reservations are the smart move here. Enough diners have mentioned needing them that walking in on a weekend without one is a gamble.
For docking, the numbers tell a story about who this marina is actually built for. The rebuilt system has 25 slips, all capable of taking transient boats up to 110 feet, with an approach depth of 13 feet and dockside depth of 12 feet. Daily, weekly, and monthly rates all run $5.00 per foot. Annual leasing drops to $3.75 per foot, a 25 percent discount that only makes sense if the marina expects most of its slips to be filled by people who plan to stay, not weekend visitors passing through. That pricing structure lines up with how the property describes itself: a place designed, in its own words, not just for docking but for living. If you have been circling the idea of a slip here, the annual rate is the one built to reward you for committing.
Beyond the water and the kitchen, the property has added a fenced dog park with a splash pad and in-ground water fountains, along with two putting greens set up for casual nine-hole competitions, plus a private pool with cabanas for sunset cocktails. These read less like public park amenities and more like perks built around the marina community and the future residences, so treat them as something to enjoy if you are already a slip holder or guest rather than a spot to wander into off the street.
What's Still Finishing
The piece that has not landed yet is the resort itself: the accommodations and the sixteen luxury waterfront residences that make up the other half of this project. Property materials point to a fall completion for that broader transformation, which means the rooms, and the full resort experience that goes with them, are still a matter of months away rather than something you can walk into today. If your version of "the Buccaneer is back" means booking a stay or touring a residence, that part of the story is still being written.
Why This Matters If You Live Nearby
For anyone in Palm Beach Shores trying to figure out what to actually do with this information, the practical read is straightforward. Dinner is ready now, and it is worth booking ahead rather than showing up and hoping. If you own a boat and have been waiting to see whether the marina made it through its renovation, it has, and the annual rate structure suggests now is a reasonable time to ask about a slip rather than waiting for the resort to fully open and demand to climb with it. The dog park and putting greens are a nice bonus if you already have a reason to be on the property, but they are not yet a standalone destination for the general public.
The resort and residences are the piece still worth watching rather than acting on. Fall is the target, and a seven-year renovation earns some skepticism about hard deadlines, so treat that timeline as a direction rather than a promise.
What makes the Buccaneer worth paying attention to right now is not that it is finished. It is that a landmark most of us assumed was stalled has quietly come back to life in stages, and the stage that matters to you personally, whether that is a table tonight or a slip next spring, is already within reach even while the rest of the property keeps building around it.
If you are watching how properties like the Buccaneer reshape the waterfront character of Palm Beach Shores and want to talk through what that kind of change means for buying, selling, or simply understanding your own corner of the island, Dawn Sacco at Singer Island Real Estate is happy to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.
