Port Royal Club Reopening: What the 2026 Calendar Reveals

"Reconstruction of the clubhouse is nearing completion, and the Club's management is finetuning operational details in anticipation of grand opening in October 2026 and the new clubhouse's inaugural 2026-2027 season." The club wrote that sentence in an outdoor dining petition it filed with the City of Naples ahead of the September 2, 2026 City Council meeting. The petition gives no exact opening day. The special event applications the club filed for the September 16 meeting do. They put the Grand Opening on Thursday, December 10.

Hurricane Ian destroyed the original one-story clubhouse at 2900 Gordon Drive on September 28, 2022. Four years on, the replacement's first season is easier to read in public records than in any announcement. Those records show which nights the club has booked, which rooms will have music, how loud that music can be, and where the property now meets its neighbors. Most of those rules came out of compromises reached in 2024, and the 2026 filings show how they will play out on an ordinary Tuesday or a busy Saturday.

The Season as Filed With the City

All five events the club submitted for the September 16 consent agenda are listed as private. Each one plans for onsite parking, and none asks to close Gordon Drive. Every application also requests amplified sound, which is the reason the events needed Council approval at all.

The applications also list setup and teardown windows, which run several days longer than the events. Crews set up for Welcome Back starting November 16 and take it down on November 20. For the Grand Opening, setup starts December 7 and teardown runs on December 11. City staff also noted that An Evening on 5th falls on the same December 10 night on Fifth Avenue South. In the staff review's words, "The two events will not conflict with each other."

The November and December dates add up to more than a single ribbon-cutting. There's a members' homecoming three weeks before the formal opening, then two holiday events, then a seafood night once a month through high season.

A Bigger Building Under the Same Membership Cap

The new clubhouse is far larger than the one it replaces. Naples Press reported that the $100 million plan expands the building from 32,000 square feet to 77,000, in a three-level structure 48.6 feet tall. Membership stays capped at 700. When the paper reported on the project, the club had 623 members. So the building more than doubles while the member ceiling stays where it was, and the club's own explanation was about dining. Tim McCarthy of Hart Howerton, the New York and San Francisco firm that designed the building, told officials the larger club was needed to "right-size it," because members were often turned away when the dining rooms were full, Naples Press reported.

Members helped pay for it. According to the same Naples Press report, the club was borrowing $20 million to finance construction and had assessed members $45,000 on August 1 of the approval year. About 45 members left over the cost and the wait, and 23 Port Royal residents joined from the waiting list.

Suffolk Construction built the West Indies-inspired design. Naples-based Outside Productions did the landscape plans, which the Design Review Board praised at length. The original clubhouse was designed by John L. Volk, and the city's design review documents still refer to the site by its old local name, the Port Royal Club Beach Club.

Where Music Can Play, and How It Is Limited

The new rooms are easiest to picture from the September 2 Council hearing. There, the club's team walked Council through petition 26-LE5, which sets out where live entertainment can happen and in what form. The meeting video and transcript name seven locations, five inside and two outside:

• The ballroom, with at most a seven- to nine-piece band, "as you might imagine for a wedding," mostly on weekends and set by the club's event calendar
• The Privateer, the casual restaurant, open six days a week and closed Mondays, with a solo performer, DJ or duet one to two times a week
• The coffee bar, just south of the Privateer, acoustic only and run on similar terms
• An after-dinner lounge and the à la carte dining room, the other two indoor locations
• The base of the fountain, at the end of the club's breezeway where the Gulf view opens up, with an acoustic solo performer or duet at most one to two times a week
• A mid-property balcony, the second outdoor location

The rules matter as much as the rooms. Amplified music is limited to indoor spaces with doors and windows closed. Outdoor performances can't be amplified and have to end by 10 p.m. The club described both outdoor spots as centered on the property, away from the neighbors on either side. Council approved the petition 7-0 with one change. The six-month review of how the entertainment permit is working will now start when the certificate of occupancy is issued, not at Council approval. That means the trial period starts with the first real season of use, not with the months when the building still stood empty.

These limits build on conditions from 2024. When Council approved the rebuild, it required the club to enclose the dining areas and bars nearest the adjoining residential property and to shorten pool hours, as Naples Press reported. The 2026 entertainment plan applies the same approach of putting sound in the middle of the property and keeping it indoors near the edges.

Changes at the Edges of the Property

Several approvals from this year affect the parts of the club that neighbors and beachgoers will see first.

The seawall. On April 15, 2026, Council unanimously approved Resolution 2026-15841. It amends the club's conditional use to reflect a revised seawall design that "now extends to the property line and connects with the neighbor's seawall to the south eliminating the gap." The 2024 approvals had already changed that southern edge, including a waiver for an 11-foot boundary wall where city code generally limits walls to 6 feet.

More outdoor dining. In the petition approved September 2, the club asked to add 4,370 square feet of ground-level outdoor dining, centrally placed toward the Gulf, with 18 tables, 72 chairs and 26 chaise lounges. The club cited members' requests and "the growing popularity of outdoor dining options." The application lists hours of about 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Parking. The same filing updates the parking estimate. Projected demand rises to 325 spaces from 318, and the plan supplies 343. That leaves a margin of 18 spaces, and every event in the table above lists onsite parking with no road closure. Council approved the updated parking analysis 7-0.

Two years ago the city wouldn't approve a temporary fix. In 2024, Council voted 5-1 against a 5,000-square-foot, 130-seat dining tent with modular kitchen trailers that would have fed members during construction. Council's reason was that city code allows temporary structures for only six months, and the rebuild was expected to take 30 months to three years.

What the Dates Confirm, and What They Leave Open

The two filings don't agree on the opening. The outdoor dining petition said October 2026. The special event application, filed with the city around the same time, puts the Grand Opening on December 10. Neither document explains whether December 10 is a celebration held after members are already back or a later opening date. We found no 2026 news report confirming when the clubhouse opens. The original forecast, reported in both Gulfshore Business and Naples Press, was simply "late 2026."

The city's online voting record calls itself preliminary and says it "should not be relied upon as the official record." It also numbers the outdoor dining resolution two different ways, 2026-19546 in the item heading and 2026-15946 in the motion. As of mid-October, the firmest date in the record is November 19. That's the night the club has told the city it expects 500 people back on the property between 5 and 10 p.m., with tents up and cars parked on site.

If you own in Port Royal and want to talk through how the reopened club affects your street or your home's value, Teresa Krapf and Lukas Krapf-Dobr are glad to have a quiet conversation. Contact Us.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.