The Island Cow, a longtime favorite among Sanibel residents, is on track to rise again from the wreckage left by a 2022 kitchen fire and Hurricane Ian — this time with a twist nobody saw coming: the island’s first mini golf course right next door to the dining room. Sanibel City Council has amended an ordinance to allow the popular Periwinkle Way restaurant to rebuild with the recreational amenity attached, according to Gulf Coast News, though the final design for the site has not yet been submitted.
The push to pair a restaurant comeback with a round of mini golf traces back to the restaurant’s owner, Brian Polasek, who told the city he was interested in developing a course to serve residents and visitors as part of the rebuild, according to captivasanibel.com. On April 21, 2026, the Sanibel City Council voted 5-0 to direct the Planning Commission to create a conditional use for a miniature-golf recreational amenity within the city’s General Commercial zoning district, the outlet reported. Officials noted the proposed development would sit entirely within the commercially zoned portion of the Island Cow property.
The scale of what’s envisioned is modest by theme-park standards: the course would cover roughly 1.5 acres of the restaurant property, according to Gulf Shore Business. The outlet’s reporting also lays out how the restaurant got here — a kitchen fire destroyed The Island Cow in August 2022, and just a few weeks later Hurricane Ian scuttled plans for a quick rebuild, pushing the project into years of limbo.
A Zoning Change With Wider Reach
What makes this more than a single-restaurant story is the ripple effect the zoning change could have across Sanibel’s commercial corridor. City staff said the proposed conditional use could make mini golf a potential use on 67 of the 69 properties in the General Commercial District, per the same Gulf Shore Business report. That detail alone turned the Island Cow’s request into a citywide land-use conversation rather than a one-off variance…