Harold Balink spent fifteen months and about a million dollars turning a former cigar lounge into a wine and whiskey bar at Bell Tower Shops. That part of the story is simple enough. The part that makes it worth knowing is where the space sits: a few doors down from a restaurant he already owned once, at a shopping center that called him back seventeen years after he first left it.
Bell Tower's leasing team didn't go looking for a national chain to fill 2,600 square feet next to The Fresh Market. They went looking for Balink specifically, and asked him to move Harold's, his thriving restaurant on South Tamiami Trail, into the space instead. He said no to that. He said yes to building something new.
That new thing is Vybe, and it opened to the public on May 19, 2026.
The Space Has Had Three Names Since He Left
Long before Vybe, the same stretch of Bell Tower was home to Crü, a restaurant Balink ran with the late Shannon Yates from 2010 to 2015. The partnership ended, both moved on to separate projects, and the space cycled through a run of tenants that had nothing to do with wine or whiskey: Dickey's Barbecue Pit, then EO Burgers, then Stogie Cigar Lounge.
By the time Bell Tower's leasing agents called Balink back, the unit had been a barbecue joint, a burger stand, and a cigar bar in the years since he'd left. None of them stuck the way Crü had. That history is part of why the offer to relocate Harold's didn't make sense to him. Harold's is thriving where it is, at 15250 South Tamiami Trail, and moving a working restaurant to chase a landlord's timeline is a different bet than building something from scratch in a space with a complicated recent past.
So he built Vybe instead, and named it after the word he says customers already used to describe Harold's.
What Fifteen Months and a Million Dollars Bought
Balink didn't do this alone. He partnered with Matthew Baum, founder of Bonita Springs-based Wolverine Management, which also runs three Brass Tap locations and six Agave Bandido restaurants across the region. Balink took the kitchen. Baum built the bar program, which now runs more than 200 liquor selections through a space with 62 seats indoors and 38 more on a covered patio.
The result reads as a deliberate split of labor rather than a single vision stretched thin. On the drink side:
- The Old Fashioned, built with Bulleit 95 Rye and demerara
- Aromatic Apologies, a Japanese whiskey cocktail with lime, egg white, and sage
- The 21st Amendment, lemon, honey, and ginger
- Harold's Passion, blanco tequila with lime, agave, passionfruit, and Fresno chili
The kitchen side leans toward shareables built for a bar crowd rather than a full dinner service: gouda arancini with herb aioli, furikake-crusted tuna with mango and ginger-lime yogurt, and a brioche dumpling with wild mushrooms that's already become a table favorite according to local coverage of the opening. There's also a rotating decanter board of meats and cheeses, the kind of thing built for people who came to stay a while, not to eat and leave.
Balink has said that customers kept asking him where to go in south Fort Myers for a good cocktail before or after dinner, or a nightcap with live music, and that "you'd really have to go to Naples or Bonita Springs to find that." Vybe is his answer to that specific gap, not a generic addition to Bell Tower's restaurant row.
The Empty Storefronts Nobody's Pretending Aren't There
Here's the part of the story that doesn't fit neatly into an opening announcement. Bell Tower still has vacant units, and locals have been saying so in 2026 reviews of the property. Visitors this year have counted roughly a dozen empty storefronts scattered through the center, a noticeable shift from the era when Bell Tower carried Gap, Gap Kids, Banana Republic, Soma, White House Black Market, Victoria's Secret, and Francesca's all at once.
That's not a story about Bell Tower failing. Retail centers built in the mid-2000s have had to reinvent themselves as national apparel chains consolidated storefronts everywhere, not just at this one address. But it's also not a detail worth skipping past if you're trying to understand what's actually happening at the property right now. A single high-profile bar opening doesn't erase a dozen dark storefronts, and treating this as a full turnaround story would be the kind of overstatement that doesn't hold up on a Tuesday afternoon drive through the parking lot.
What it does tell you is something narrower and more interesting: which tenants the landlord is choosing to bring back when a space does turn over.
What the Landlord Is Betting On Instead
Bell Tower didn't fill this vacancy with another national chain trying out a Southwest Florida location for the first time. It went back to an operator with a fifteen-year history at the property, someone who'd already built one successful concept there and walked away from it under complicated circumstances. That's a different kind of bet than chasing whatever brand is expanding fastest that quarter.
It's the same instinct that shows up elsewhere in the building. Balink's business partner already runs three Brass Tap locations and six Agave Bandido restaurants regionally, which means Wolverine Management has its own track record of knowing what works in this specific market before ever signing a Bell Tower lease. Pairing a known local chef with a known local operator, in a building both of them already understand, reads less like an experiment and more like a landlord trying to reduce risk in a property that still has real vacancy to fill.
For a resident who's watched Bell Tower go quiet in patches over the past few years, that's a more useful signal than counting empty units on a walk from Ulta to The Capital Grille. Vacancy tells you what's not working. Who a property calls back tells you what the landlord thinks will.
Vybe is open Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 4 p.m. to midnight, and Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m. It sits across the parking lot from The Capital Grille and next door to Ulta, at 13499 South Cleveland Avenue, Unit 245, the same general stretch of Bell Tower where Crü used to run. If you've been driving to Naples or Bonita Springs for a cocktail and live music on a Friday night, this is the first sign in a while that south Fort Myers built its own version of that instead of waiting for someone else to bring it.
I keep half an eye on stretches like this one for the same reason I keep half an eye on new construction sites and builder incentives across Southwest Florida: the small, specific changes tell you more about a neighborhood's direction than any single headline does. If you're weighing what a corner of South Fort Myers is actually becoming, not just what it advertises itself as, that's the kind of read I like to help people work through.
If you want to talk through what's changing in this part of Fort Myers, or anywhere else across Southwest Florida, Daza Estates is a good place to start. Let's Connect.
