Welcome to the Clubs
Sometimes finding your ideal community is as simple as walking into its grand clubhouse. Gated golf and country-club communities throughout Southwest Florida offer an astounding array of amenities and facilities, all geared to make members and residents feel welcome.
Clubhouses here range from an intimate 10,000 square feet to well over 70,000, with architecture and interiors that rival what you'd see in castles and museums-marble floors, Venetian plaster, domed ceilings, groin vaults, beams, custom furnishings and commissioned artwork. Clubhouses reflect the character of the community and serve as the epicenter of the country-club world.
"You want members to feel like the clubhouse is their home away from home. Hopefully, they'll want to spend a lot of time there," says Bob Town, an architect with the ADP Group. The Sarasota company has designed local clubs from Fort Myers to Marco Island.
This elegant sense of welcome is often evident in the architecture. "A grand estate home with a wing for golf" was the effect Atlanta-based architect Richard Diedrich intended-and achieved-with his design of the main clubhouse at Collier's Reserve in Naples. Diedrich modeled the exterior of the three-story Naples National clubhouse after a Palladian villa, a design he says was inspired by a trip to northern Italy. The 33,000-square-foot building emphasizes vertical and classic elements, seen in the order of columns encircling the courtyard atrium inside, which rises two levels to a vaulted skylight and displays commissioned artwork. The ground level provides a drive-through valet area under the club. The second floor offers formal dining, pro shop and locker rooms; the third floor has guest suites and an elegant wood-cloaked boardroom and library. Outside, there's a 5,000-square-foot garden terrace.
The Club at Mediterra's clubhouse, another Diedrich design, also takes its cues from the Mediterranean and creates a formal-and different-sense of arrival. "Mediterra is special," Diedrich says. "It has an arrival court and courtyards, which are part of the Mediterranean character. Rather than the typical porte cochere and driveway, we've really created a place of arrival. You see the traditional courtyard, trellises with plantings, date palms, a fountain and loggias wrapping two sides."
The vertically composed clubhouse has wings that look like additions-much like a Tuscan home. Inside, columns scale down the large dining room, the boardroom has a cozy fireplace, and golfers have a separate, more casual entrance that also gives them access to the bar.
The clubhouse at Quail West Golf & Country Club in Naples is one of the largest in the area. Elevated above a landscaped stream and bridge, the 70,000-square-foot clubhouse has all the requisite elements-ballroom, multiple formal and casual dining areas, billiards and card rooms, locker rooms, and tennis and golf-pro shops-and a few extras as well, including a racquetball court and a tropically landscaped natatorium.
The clubhouse formula generally incorporates golf services and pro shop, casual and formal dining, fitness center, meeting rooms, and card and game rooms. But that's the extent of the similarities. Interior and exterior architecture appointments give each a distinct personality that complements the community's character.
Until recently, clubhouses followed the bigger-is-better mentality, with single impressive and enormous structures of 50,000, 60,000, even 70,000 square feet. Many developers today are breaking down the space into several buildings with more intimate appeal. The Miromar Spa & Beach Club consists of two lakeside buildings-the European spa with fitness center and the separate open-air Blue Water Beach Grill-linked by the patio deck, 210-square-foot, zero-edge pool and a portion of the facility's two miles of beaches. The recipient of a Sand Dollar Award for best clubhouse, the facility isn't (technically) the Estero community's clubhouse. That building doesn't physically exist.yet. Currently in the design phase, the community's 16,000-square-foot clubhouse will have a 25-seat theater, wine room, dining and lakeside terraces overlooking the 230-plus-acre Lake Como, a conference room, learning center, game and card rooms and library. Another clubhouse-a golf-only facility-is under construction and is expected to open in September.
Visitors enter the spa building via a lobby with colorful glass artwork specially collected by Miromar's founder and president, Margaret Miller. Fitness buffs don't have to fight over the remote-each cardio machine has its own plasma television and headphones. The aerobics room, Pilates studio and fitness center have been thoughtfully positioned to welcome in lots of natural light. Spa treatment rooms open onto private Zen gardens with fountains and colorful tropical landscaping. Columns, friezes, arches, a ceremonial gate to the pool and tropical landscaping, including lots of palms and Italian cypress, accent the exterior architecture. The grill, located in an open-air pavilion, continues the tropical resort motif, with a koi pond, colorful glass fish, comfortable banquettes, a bar, and a menu of international favorites including a signature lobster salad. "We want residents to feel like they've been transported somewhere else," says Miller, whose goal is to deliver the resort life every day. That's why the club architecture, designed by noted Naples architect David Humphrey, is reminiscent of Miller's favorite Saint Tropez destinations. "We wanted the club to feel like the south of France, with the restaurant right on the sand," she says. "Residents can drive their boat up to the grill and park. That's what this is about."
Verandah, a Fort Myers community under development by The Bonita Bay Group, has adopted the multiplex concept for its club facilities. Verandah's River Village will eventually have several individual community buildings, two of which, the Golf House pro shop and Boat House, are now open. This scenario, say Bonita Bay Group execs, creates a more intimate, communal feeling and also minimizes the impact to the oak hammock, where this new village is being built. Moss-draped trees and architecture reminiscent of early Florida, with woodwork trim, large verandahs and exposed beams and trusses, transport guests back to a time when riverboats were the best mode of travel and boathouses dotted the area's waterways. The Boat House, a wooden structure built along the Orange River, has a tin roof, general store with stained plank floor, and multiple decks overlooking the Orange River. A restaurant, nature center and tennis and fitness center are also planned for River Village.
WCI Communities' Sun City Center in Fort Myers also compartmentalizes the traditional clubhouse into smaller units. Its multibuilding Plaza del Sol complex, collectively painted 56 different sun-drenched colors, offers an arts and crafts studio with kiln, a game room, restaurant, natatorium with second-floor jogging track, cyber café, 100-seat movie theater, hobby shop, ballroom and fitness center. Outdoor amenities include tennis and basketball courts, volleyball and softball facilities, a sandy beach, fishing pier, swimming pool, even lawn bowling.
Residents of The Colony, in Bonita Springs, can dine in two lavish settings-the 28,000-square-foot Colony Country Club and 12,000-square-foot Bay Club, both by Humphrey with interior appointments by H.D. Litton Interior Design. The two-story clubhouse, styled after a Tuscan castle, has stone and hand-painted murals throughout, plus a wine room, library and golf facilities. Humphrey's curved and tiered design of the main formal dining and bar ensures there's not a bad seat in the house, bringing lake and golf views to all tables. The facility also has expansive terraces, and an outdoor banquet area. Visitors to the Bay Club can't help but look up as they cross the threshold. A spiral staircase ascends three floors, culminating below a dome ceiling. Exposed beams, arched doorways, marble mosaic tile floors, faux finished walls and groin vaults enhance the interior architecture. Formal dining with a fireplace and wine vault are on the second floor; casual dining, a lounge, al fresco terrace dining and two private dining rooms are on the third floor-all peering at Estero Bay.
Golf, the reason for most clubhouses, is never far away; it often dominates the scenery. Dining rooms tend to overlook the finishing holes and environs. "Grey Oaks is a good example of a clubhouse taking advantage of its beautiful setting," Diedrich says of the Naples building he designed. "You enter into an open loggia and see right through to the golf course." The grand clubhouse design, which has been expanded, pulls in elements of the environment-blue roof tiles that tie into the water on the golf course and a mural of a Florida scene covering the entire back wall in the grill room, the club's former dining room.
While the Grey Oaks club introduces the golf course at the front door, the Island Club on Marco, redesigned after a fire destroyed half the existing club, plays up the element of surprise, says Javier Suarez, an architect with the ADP Group. Its design guides guests around the centrally located kitchen to the boardroom, dining room and other amenities.
"The membership wanted an expanded dining area, everything larger and more elegant," adds ADP's Town, who worked with the lead architect, the late Roy Haggard, on the new club. "The design is a little different. Members wanted something they felt was the right image for the club on an island." That image speaks of Old Florida with its porches and metal roof, grill work and bracket detail. Individual roof structures shade the building's south façade and add architectural interest, creating angles of alternating shadow and light from the green-a symmetry enhanced by spires. Its interior space is just as dramatic with a two-story entrance lobby and a gallery honoring the late Gene Sarazen, who made the Island Club his home club.
ADP's redesign of the Imperial Golf Club in Naples ended up as a new clubhouse built next to the old. The new second-story facility allowed the architects to get more creative with ceilings, play up the views from the dining room and create relaxing and inviting spaces for the membership, says Suarez.
Old Florida and Mediterranean are common architectural themes of area clubhouses. Some pull in other parts of the world, like The Club at TwinEagles' 47,000-square-foot building with its Scottish façade, while the 20,000-square-foot building in Olde Cypress delivers a Spanish-Mediterranean flavor. Others draw inspiration from a little closer to home-Bay Colony's clubhouse has a distinct Old South character as does the Old Collier Golf Club, a golf-only club with shake-style roof, sweeping front verandah and gable dormers that recall a stately Southern manor.
Whether large or small, Mediterranean or Floridian, clubhouses must appeal to current and future membership and balance that mission with functionality-a task Suarez refers to as the Disney effect. "Guests have to be able to go through the facility without seeing what's happening behind the scenes," he says. "It's all about creating that Disney magic."