Three Opening Dates, One Wall Fight: What's Actually Happening at the Port Royal Club

The Port Royal Club's own brochure, the one distributed to members during the design process, said the new clubhouse would open in summer 2026. By the time Naples City Council finished its hearings on the project in August 2024, the timeline coverage in local press had already shifted to "late 2026." Then, in a January 2026 communication to members, the club moved the language again, to fall 2026.

None of those three dates came from a hurricane, a lawsuit, or a construction stoppage. They came from the ordinary friction of building something enormous next to someone's house, on a coastline, after the original burned through years of committee work before the first support beam went up. If you belong to the club, or you're on the list waiting to, the shifting date matters less than what's actually been running the whole time, and what's been sitting empty.

What Actually Went Quiet in September 2022

Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28, 2022, and the storm surge destroyed the club's one-story clubhouse at 2900 Gordon Drive. The building was 65 years old at the time, dating to the club's founding in the late 1950s alongside the original development of Port Royal itself.

What's easy to miss in the retelling is that Ian didn't take down the whole club. The nine Har-Tru clay tennis courts kept operating. The beach access kept operating. What disappeared was the dining room, the bar, the kitchen, and every indoor gathering space that had anchored decades of member life. For a club built around meals as much as matches, that's the half of the building that actually defines daily use, and it's the half that's been gone for four years.

The Building That Grew, and the Neighbor Who Pushed Back

Members voted to rebuild rather than repair, and the design that emerged wasn't a like-for-like replacement. The petitions before Council covered a jump from roughly 32,000 square feet to 77,000 square feet across the property, with the clubhouse itself landing at about 62,000 square feet, three levels, elevated to current storm standards.

That growth ran directly into Terry Mullen, the owner of a $31 million home on the parcel just south of the club. Mullen's objections, over noise, sightlines, building height, and traffic, turned the August 2024 approval hearing into roughly ten hours of testimony from acoustics experts, architects, and attorneys on both sides. The club ended up making $2 million in design changes to address his concerns before the vote: moving the pool 80 feet farther from his property line, enclosing the third-level lounge balcony on the south side, and agreeing that sliding doors on the second-level sunset bar would close once the space reached half capacity. Council approved an 11-foot wall between the two properties, five votes to two, even though city code caps residential walls at 6 feet. The building's final height, after accounting for base elevation and storm surge requirements, came in at 48.6 feet.

The club's public statement afterward called the outcome one they were "delighted to have secured," language that undersells what four rounds of compromise with one neighbor actually cost in time and design changes. Here's how the opening date has moved across the record:

The Tent the City Wouldn't Allow

While the redesign worked through approvals, the club asked Council for a bridge: a 5,000-square-foot, 130-seat temporary dining tent with modular trailers for a kitchen and staff, meant to carry members through the roughly two and a half to three years construction would take. Council said no, five to one, because city code treats temporary structures as valid for six months, not multiple years.

That denial is the detail that explains what members have actually experienced since 2022. Rather than a tent on the property, the club shifted to whatever mix of trailers and offsite venues it could arrange to keep dining service running somewhere for members, none of it at 2900 Gordon Drive. Whatever fall 2026 looks like when it finally arrives, it will be the first time in four years that Port Royal Club dining happens back where it started.

Who Left, and Who Was Waiting

The rebuild wasn't free for the people paying for it. The club, capped at 700 members, borrowed $20 million toward the $100 million project and levied a $45,000 special assessment on members effective August 1, 2024. In a letter to members, Club President Nancy Carlson reported that 45 members resigned in response, 85 percent of them over age 70, and that 23 residents on the waiting list joined to fill the gap. That left roughly 622 to 623 active members against the 700-person cap, a number confirmed in reporting on both the initial conditional-use approval and the later design-review sign-off.

The pattern is worth sitting with. The people who left were disproportionately older members facing a five-figure bill for a building they might not use as long. The people who replaced them were already property owners waiting for a seat at the table. The club didn't shrink so much as it turned over, and the turnover happened entirely before a single wall of the new clubhouse existed.

What Members Actually Asked For

Before the design was finalized, the club surveyed its membership, drawing a 65 percent participation rate, and asked what mattered most in the new building. The top-rated priorities, scored on a five-point scale, were:

• Dining spaces with a Gulf or beach view: 4.82
• Covered outdoor dining options: 4.18
• Upgraded lounge chairs and umbrellas: 4.15
• An indoor-outdoor bar as the social focal point: 4.07
• Dining on the pool deck: 4.06
• Rooftop bar or dining area: 3.87

Every top-rated item is a dining or bar feature. Nobody rated the tennis courts or the fitness center as their top ask, because those never stopped working. The survey is a fairly direct confirmation of what the tent denial already suggested: dining is the piece of club life members have been missing, and it's the piece the new building is being built almost entirely around.

What's Actually Running Right Now

If you're a member today, the honest picture is a split one. The nine Har-Tru courts are booked the way they've always been booked. The beach access hasn't changed. What's still missing is the room where the club actually gathers, and based on the pattern of the last two years, "fall 2026" is a date worth watching rather than circling. It's moved twice already, and each move tracked a real event, a hearing, a compromise, a permit, not just a slipping calendar.

For members and neighbors who've spent four years watching this play out one Council hearing at a time, the wait has never really been about a building. It's been about whether a 65-year-old social institution could redesign itself, thin its own roster, and negotiate with a next-door neighbor, and still come out the other side recognizable. The survey data suggests the membership already knows what they're waiting to get back.

If you're weighing a move into Port Royal, or you already call it home and want a clearer read on how amenities like club eligibility factor into a specific property, Gulf Coast Luxury Group offers a private concierge consultation to walk through what's changing in the neighborhood and what it means for your particular address.