Every write-up of Bonita Bay Club's new clubhouse leads with the same three details: a rooftop bar overlooking the golf courses and the Gulf of Mexico, an integrated sushi bar tucked into an expanded 55th Hole, and a 360-person ballroom that doubles as a card room for daily table games. Members approved the $110 million project in May 2026, and it is easy to see why those are the details every headline reaches for first.
Further down the same announcement sits a number that says more about a Tuesday night at the club than any bar or ballroom will: employee facilities in the new building are set to grow by roughly 500 percent, a change the club says came directly out of a member survey asking for better staff areas, modernized kitchens, and more operational capacity. Nobody put that on a rendering. It is the answer to a question most members have asked without quite framing it that way, usually while waiting a little longer than expected for a table at the 55th Hole.
What Members Actually Approved
The scope is real. The new clubhouse will be 140,000 square feet, built in two phases on the club's 2,400-acre main campus in Bonita Springs, and designed in a Florida coastal style. Beyond the rooftop bar and the ballroom, the plan includes:
- An expanded 55th Hole with indoor and outdoor dining and a new sushi bar
- The Sunset Lounge, a casual spot for drinks and light bites
- Three full-service kitchens supporting the club's dining program
- Multiple private function rooms for member events
- A lower-level parking garage built to improve accessibility
"This project is far more than a new clubhouse. It reflects our identity as a member-owned club," says Fred Fung, the club's CEO and General Manager, in the announcement of the May 2026 approval.
That phrase, member-owned club, is doing more work than it might first appear to. Bonita Bay Club is Florida's largest member-owned private golf club, and that ownership structure explains a pattern that becomes obvious once you line up the club's last three major projects side by side.
The Fifteen-Year Habit
Members bought Bonita Bay Club from its original developer in 2010. Since then, they have put roughly $250 million of their own capital back into the property, and this new clubhouse is described as the final phase of that multi-decade effort. The pattern is worth seeing in full:
| Year | Project | Investment | What It Built |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | "Vision 2013" clubhouse renovation | $11.5 million | The original 55th Hole open-air bar and grill, a 14-foot fire pit, a new 30,000-square-foot golf shop |
| 2024 | Naples campus master plan | $50 million | A new clubhouse, short-game practice area, Golf Academy, and Club Fitting Lab |
| 2026 | New main clubhouse | $110 million | An expanded 55th Hole with a sushi bar, the Sunset Lounge, a rooftop bar, and roughly 500 percent more staff space |
Notice what is happening in that middle column. The 55th Hole itself was born in the 2018 project, converted from the old golf shop into a 4,700-square-foot bar and grill that quickly became, in the club's own telling, the members' most popular gathering spot. Eight years later, that same restaurant is getting expanded again. A developer-owned club chasing resale value has little reason to rebuild a popular venue twice in a decade. A member-owned club answering to the people who eat there every week has every reason to.
The club also carries a Platinum Club of America designation and operates five championship courses across two campuses, three by Arthur Hills and two by Tom Fazio, along with a 60,000-square-foot Lifestyle Center for fitness, spa, and salon services. None of that changes with this project. What changes is the infrastructure behind the parts members interact with least directly, and that is where the real story sits.
Why Staff Space Is the Real Amenity
A member survey identified staff areas, modernized kitchens, and expanded operational capacity as top priorities heading into this project, and the club responded by increasing employee facilities by approximately 500 percent. That is not a rounding error. It is a structural admission that the current back-of-house space has been the ceiling on service quality, not the golf courses, not the tennis program, not the number of dining venues.
Anyone who has eaten at the 55th Hole and Clubroom on a busy Sunday, grabbed a smoothie from the Wave Café at the Lifestyle Center, or ordered a frozen cocktail at the Breezeway Bar and Café after a match has felt the edges of that ceiling, even if they never named it. Chef Richard Brumm and his team already run a scratch-made kitchen across those venues. What they have not had, apparently, is the physical space to staff it the way the club wants to promise going forward. Three full-service kitchens and a fivefold increase in staff facilities is the club telling its own members: the bottleneck was never the menu.
What Continues While the Work Happens
The club has stated that member access to amenities and dining will continue throughout the two-phased construction project. What that means in practice, on a week-to-week basis, has not yet been published in detail. As of the May 2026 announcement, no specific start or completion dates for either phase have been released, which is itself useful information for anyone planning a season around club dining: expect a rollout, not a single closure date circled on a calendar.
In the meantime, the venues members already know keep operating. The Wave Café, the Breezeway Bar and Café, and the current version of the 55th Hole remain the daily options while planning and the first phase of construction move forward. The club's history with this kind of project offers a reasonable guide. The 2024 Naples campus work delivered a new clubhouse and golf academy without members losing access to the courses or dining rooms in the interim, and this project has been framed the same way from the start.
For a Member Watching This Unfold
The rooftop bar will get the photos. The sushi counter inside the expanded 55th Hole will get the reservations. Both are genuine upgrades to a club that already ranks among the more decorated private clubs in the state. But the number that will actually shape how the next few years feel at Bonita Bay Club is the one buried in the release: a member survey asked for better staff space, and the club answered with a fivefold increase, tied directly to the kitchens and service lines members rely on every day. That is the part of this $110 million story worth watching, long after the ballroom opens.
For members and neighbors following what continued investment like this means for the broader Bonita Bay market, the Lickley Group tracks these developments closely as part of our ongoing work in the community. If you would like a closer look at how projects like this shape property values and buyer interest in Bonita Bay, Request a Confidential Market Consultation.
