Bonita Bay Has Three Landlords, and Only One Shows Up On the Listing Sheet

A buyer comparing two Bonita Bay listings last season found them almost identical on paper: same square footage, same view corridor, similar HOA line. The homes priced twelve percent apart, and nothing in the disclosure packet explained why until she asked what came with each one. One seller was current on a Bonita Bay Club membership. The other had let it lapse years earlier. Neither fact showed up in the HOA number both listings quoted.

That gap is not a fluke of one transaction. It is how Bonita Bay works.

Most Southwest Florida communities run on a single fee structure: pay the association, get the amenities. Bonita Bay runs on three separate ones, each with its own board, its own budget, and its own decision to opt in or stay out. The mandatory piece is small compared to what most buyers assume the whole community costs. The optional pieces are where the real variation lives, and they are owned by two entities that have nothing to do with each other.

The HOA Covers the Trails, Not the Tee Times

Every one of Bonita Bay's roughly 3,200 residences carries membership in the Bonita Bay Community Association automatically. That is the mandatory layer, and according to the association it funds the roads, the twelve miles of walking and biking paths, the community's parks, and the private beach park off Hickory Boulevard, which finished its own redevelopment and reopened to residents. Dues for this layer are commonly cited in the range of three to six thousand dollars a year, though the exact figure depends on which neighborhood within Bonita Bay you own in, since villas, carriage homes, high-rises and single-family parcels carry different sub-association costs on top of the base assessment.

What that fee does not include is golf, tennis, the fitness and spa complex, or a seat at the clubhouse bar. The Bonita Bay Community Association is explicit that the Club is a separate, optional membership. You can own a home inside the gates, pay your HOA in full, and never set foot in a Bonita Bay Club dining room.

The Club Just Committed $110 Million to Itself

Bonita Bay Club is not a division of the HOA. It is a member-owned private club, Florida's largest, and it makes its own capital decisions independent of anyone who has not bought in. In May 2026 its membership approved a $110 million clubhouse project for the community's 2,400-acre main campus: a 140,000-square-foot building in two phases, designed in a Florida coastal style, with an expanded 55th Hole restaurant and sushi bar, a new Sunset Lounge, and a rooftop bar looking out over the golf courses. Fred Fung, the club's CEO and general manager, framed it as more than a building project, calling it a reflection of the club's identity as a member-owned organization and its ongoing reinvestment in its own amenities, according to the announcement distributed through Hunter Public Relations.

The number matters less than what it reveals about who is paying it. Since acquiring the club from its original developer in 2010, members have put roughly $250 million into capital improvements across the property, a Naples campus clubhouse rebuild finished in 2024, a short-game practice facility, a golf academy, seven dining venues, fifteen pickleball courts, and an employee housing complex that opened in November 2025. None of that spending touched the HOA's books, and none of it required a homeowner outside the club to contribute a dollar.

The club's own track record is that construction has not meant closure. The Esperia-Seaglass clubhouse renovation, handled by Clive Daniel Home and Lutgert Construction, wrapped this spring with a refreshed fireplace wall, custom bar, and updated Social, Card and Billiards rooms for those neighborhoods, while the community's calendar ran on schedule around it, including the FineMark Women's Pro Tennis Championship, an ITF W100 tournament held on the club's courts from April 27 through May 3. The club's Sports Center, with its 16 Har-Tru tennis courts, 15 pickleball courts, championship croquet lawn and geothermal saltwater pool, sits apart from the new clubhouse footprint entirely, which is why none of that programming has needed to pause for the two-phase build now underway.

Thirty-Nine Neighbors Own the Marina, Not the Club

If the club is one layer, the marina is a third one entirely, and its ownership story explains why it operates on a different clock from everything else inside the gates. In late 2012, the family that had owned the Bonita Bay Marina and its restaurant put both up for public sale. Concerned that an outside buyer could change the character of the property, a group of residents led by Ken Meyer and Larry Russell began raising commitments to buy it themselves. By January 2013 they had enough backers to make a bid, and by July of that year the purchase closed. The marina and Backwater Jack's restaurant are now owned outright by 39 resident investors, a structure reported by Spotlight News Magazine, and the investors have said they eventually hope to sell the assets to the Community Association, though that has not happened yet.

That ownership sits entirely outside both the HOA and the Club. The marina runs 98 wet slips and dry storage for 326 vessels up to 34 feet, offers direct access to Estero Bay and the Gulf through the Imperial River, and now also hosts Sweetwater Lifestyles, a private boat club operating from the same docks. Backwater Jack's has its own operating hours that shift seasonally on its own schedule, moving to Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., with happy hour from 3 to 6, starting in May 2026, a rhythm set by the restaurant's owners rather than by the club's or the association's calendar.

Getting priority access to any of it means signing up for a fourth layer on top of the first three: Jack's Pack, an annual membership that runs $500 plus tax and includes 10 percent off food and beverage, a $150 beverage credit, a discount at the marina's ship's store, and a discount on marine fuel. According to Backwater Jack's own site, Jack's Pack members can also book advance reservations through a members-only portal, something non-members cannot do regardless of how long they have lived inside the gates. The restaurant is open to the public with a reservation, member or not, which means the marina layer is the one piece of this structure that does not require Bonita Bay ownership at all.

What Two Nearly Identical Listings Can Actually Cost

Line these three up and the picture that emerges is not one fee with add-ons. It is three separately governed entities that happen to sit behind the same gate, each with its own board, its own capital plans, and its own decision about who gets to opt in.

A homeowner who has let a club membership lapse is not violating any HOA rule. They are simply choosing not to carry the second bill, and the marina bill is theirs to take or leave regardless of the other two. That is why a buyer comparing an active club membership to a lapsed one on paper-identical homes can be looking at a real cost difference that has nothing to do with the house itself.

For anyone weighing Bonita Bay against another gated Bonita Springs or Naples community where a single HOA fee genuinely does cover the golf course and the clubhouse, the comparison needs an asterisk. The mandatory number here is smaller than it looks, and the total cost of living the way most buyers picture Bonita Bay, with golf, tennis, and a boat slip included, depends on decisions the seller made that will not transfer with the deed.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly

Does buying in Bonita Bay automatically make me a Bonita Bay Club member? No. Community Association membership is automatic for owners. Club membership is separate and optional, and it comes with its own application and dues structure independent of the HOA.

Can I eat at Backwater Jack's if I do not own in Bonita Bay? Yes. The restaurant accepts reservations from the public, not only from residents, though Jack's Pack members get priority booking that non-members do not.

Will the club's $110 million clubhouse project disrupt access during construction? The club has said dining and amenity access will continue through both phases, and its record on the 2024 Naples campus rebuild and the recent Esperia-Seaglass renovation supports that claim, since neither project closed golf, tennis, or dining during construction.

Is the marina membership the same as the club membership? No. They are owned by different parties. Jack's Pack applies only to the marina and Backwater Jack's, and Bonita Bay Club membership applies only to the golf, tennis and fitness campus.

Comparing homes across Bonita Bay, or comparing Bonita Bay to another Southwest Florida community entirely, works best once you know which of these three bills you actually want to carry. If you are trying to price that out against a specific listing, Owens Jablonski | Gulf Coast Advisors can walk through what each layer costs for the property you have in mind before you make an offer.