"It's not Miami Beach. It's the 'Naples way.' There aren't many drunks or cigar smokers."
That is how Port Royal Club board chair Nancy Carlson described the club she has spent the better part of four years trying to rebuild. She said it during a public hearing that ran roughly ten hours, in front of a City Council asked to approve a $100 million reconstruction of a beach club that has anchored this neighborhood since 1959. The hearing ended in a unanimous vote. It also ended with the clubhouse two stories taller than the one Hurricane Ian destroyed, a completion date that has slid from summer to fall, and a membership roster that looks noticeably different from the one that walked out the door in September 2022.
If you live in Port Royal, or you're on the waitlist watching the fence line on Gordon Drive, the version of the club coming back is not simply the old one restored. It's a different building, a different price of entry, and in some respects a different roster of people holding cards to it. Here's what actually happened while the clubhouse was gone.
The Ten-Hour Hearing That Added a Floor
The original Port Royal Club clubhouse, a single-story structure at 2900 Gordon Drive, was destroyed by Hurricane Ian's storm surge on September 28, 2022. Members voted to rebuild rather than repair, and the plan that eventually reached Naples City Council called for something considerably larger than what had stood there for 65 years: a three-level clubhouse with a two-story garage, indoor and outdoor dining, a new pool deck, and expanded landscaping.
That growth in scale is what triggered the neighborhood's longest fight over the project. Terry Mullen, whose $31 million beachfront home sits just south of the club, opposed the added height and the noise he expected from a taller, busier facility. The club made roughly $2 million in design changes to address his concerns before the hearing, and Council still had to work through his objections in detail. In the end, Council approved a waiver allowing an 11-foot wall between the properties, nearly double the city's standard 6-foot limit, along with restrictions on the third-level lounge's southern balcony to manage sound. Council also split on the outdoor dining approval, passing it 6-1.
The reason this matters to residents now is simple: the same hearing that resolved the Mullen dispute is the reason the club is taller than it was, and it's part of why the calendar moved. The club's own pre-hearing brochure had targeted a summer 2026 grand opening. Once the additional floor, the wall compromise, and the sound mitigation work were folded into final design and permitting, that target slipped. By this spring, the club's own updates pointed to a fall 2026 opening instead. Late 2026, in other words, not early summer.
What Members Paid for the Wait
Rebuilding at this scale wasn't free, and the club didn't try to disguise that. To finance construction, the club borrowed $20 million and assessed members $45,000 apiece in August 2024. Membership itself got more expensive on a separate track: the initiation payment for eligible Port Royal homeowners rose from $315,000 to $400,000 on January 1, 2026, with annual dues running $16,200 plus tax as of that update.
That combination of cost and a multi-year wait for a facility that wasn't going to reopen on the original timeline led to real turnover. Forty-five members resigned during the rebuild. According to Carlson's August 2024 letter to the membership, 85 percent of those who left were over age 70. Twenty-three residents on the waiting list moved up to fill the vacated spots, leaving the club with 622 members under its 700-member cap at that point.
That's not a footnote. A club that had operated with a stable, largely unchanging roster for six decades just processed its first real membership churn in living memory, at the exact moment the price of belonging went up. Whatever else the new clubhouse represents, it also marks a quiet generational handoff inside one of Naples' oldest private institutions.
What's Actually New Inside
The finished building, once it opens, will bear little resemblance to the low, weathered structure that stood there before Ian. Based on the club's own planning materials and reporting on the approved design, here's what residents can expect to find:
- A roughly 62,000-square-foot clubhouse across three levels, designed by Hart Howerton with interiors by Champalimaud Design and built by Suffolk Construction
- Three signature restaurants with indoor and outdoor seating overlooking the Gulf
- Four bars, including indoor-outdoor options
- A dedicated coffee shop
- A banquet venue built to hold 150 or more guests
- A Gulf-front infinity or lap pool and private beach access
- A two-story parking garage, replacing the surface lot that served the original club
The architectural language is West Indies, matching the club's traditional aesthetic rather than departing from it. This isn't a glass-and-steel reinvention. It's the same visual vocabulary the club has used for decades, scaled up to hold more people and more programming.
What Didn't Change
For all the growth in square footage and cost, the club has been deliberate about preserving the parts of its calendar that longtime members actually show up for. The Friday evening seafood buffet, Sunday brunch and dinner buffets, summer cookouts, the Valentine's Day dance, Crabfest, and the New Year's Eve beach party with fireworks are all part of the club's established rhythm, and nothing in the rebuild plans suggests any of that is going away. The nine Har-Tru clay tennis courts remain part of the identity too, alongside the fitness and spa facilities members have relied on for years.
The club's history runs back to 1959, when Glenn Sample hired architect John L. Volk to design the original clubhouse for a community still being carved out of what had been mangrove land. That continuity, an institution built by one generation and now being rebuilt for the next, is part of what Carlson was getting at with her "Naples way" comment. The building changed. The unwritten social contract, at least so far, has not.
When the Doors Actually Open
As of the most recent public updates this spring, the fall 2026 target represents the current best estimate, revised down from the original summer 2026 date in the club's pre-construction brochure. Grand openings on projects this size rarely move earlier once permitting and design changes have already pushed a date back, so residents watching for a firm date should expect official club communications, not secondhand estimates, to confirm the final month. If you want the underlying record of how the design and approval process unfolded, the Naples Press coverage of the Council vote and the club's own site are the two most direct sources.
What's clear already is that the club reopening this fall won't be a like-for-like replacement of what Ian took. It will be a taller building, a pricier membership, and a roster with more turnover than this club has seen in a generation, wrapped around the same seafood buffets and beach traditions that made it worth rebuilding in the first place. For a neighborhood that has always measured itself in decades rather than seasons, that's a meaningful shift to watch unfold from the inside.
For residents and neighbors following what this rebuild means for the broader rhythm of life in Port Royal, J2 Luxury Group keeps close watch on the details that shape this community day to day. Discover Elevated Living — Schedule a Private Consultation.
