By mid-August, roofers working on the new Sports & Lifestyle Center at The Club at Mediterra had finished the peel-and-stick underlayment and were waiting on tile. Inside, crews were running plumbing, electrical, fire-sprinkler lines and duct work. Pavers were already down outside. Club + Resort Business marked the milestone on August 18, calling the building vertical-complete. A few hundred yards away, on the South Course, greens crews were mid-way through a rebuild that touches every green complex, every bunker and every stretch of fairway turf on the course.
Two capital projects, running at the same time, on the same 1,697-acre property. The obvious assumption is that a Mediterra member's daily routine has been upended for the better part of a year. It hasn't. The reason comes down to where each project physically sits, and that detail says more about how this club operates than either project's price tag does.
The South Course Is Being Rebuilt From the Green Up
Construction on the South Course's renovation officially began this year, and it is not a cosmetic refresh. Golf Course Industry reported that the plan calls for a complete renovation of every green complex, reshaping of greenside and fairway bunkers, and regrassing of fairways and rough. The scope was shaped by an evaluation conducted jointly with the USGA and the Fazio Group, the same architects Tom Fazio brought in when he originally designed the course. Leibold Irrigation and Construction Company is doing the physical work.
Carmen Mauceri, the club's general manager and chief operating officer, framed it as a decision about the course's long-term identity rather than a patch job, telling Golf Course Industry the project is meant to keep the courses serving as what she called the crown jewels of the Mediterra experience for years to come. That framing matters here because it explains the timeline. This isn't a two-week overseed. Green complexes, bunker shaping and full regrassing on a 7,000-plus-yard course take months, not weeks, and the South Course will be out of rotation for the length of the project.
What that means day to day is straightforward: golf at Mediterra right now means the North Course. Members haven't lost golf. They've lost half their golf for a defined stretch, and the club chose to concentrate the disruption on one course rather than spread thinner renovations across both at once. That's a sequencing decision, not an accident, and it's the same logic showing up on the other side of the property.
A $38 Million Building Is Rising Where Nothing Used to Close
The bigger dollar figure belongs to the Sports & Lifestyle Center, and the site choice is the detail worth sitting with. The board approved the project in February 2025, and construction has been staged at the Piazza, open land on the property, specifically so the existing Sports Club could keep running through the build. Nobody lost a locker room, a lap pool or a tennis court to make room for the new one.
Phase 1 is a Fitness & Wellness building running roughly 27,000 to 28,000 square feet, according to Mauceri's account to Club + Resort Business. The board's original announcement laid out what that space actually holds:
- A 5,600-square-foot fitness room
- Locker rooms expanded to 2,400 square feet, including plunge pools and infrared saunas
- A yoga, fusion and functional studio around 1,600 square feet
- A roughly 600-square-foot spin room and a 900-square-foot Pilates room
- A spa with five treatment rooms, plus a café, a ladies' card room, a bocce garden and terraces, a porte cochere and a grand staircase under a cupola
David Corban Architects designed the building and BUILD is the contractor. Phase 1 is targeted for completion by summer 2027, with the full two-phase program tracking toward summer 2028, according to reporting attributed to Naples Coastal Connection and the club's own board updates. That's a longer runway than the South Course work, which tracks to the more typical timeline for a single-course renovation. The wellness center is a from-scratch building program, not a renovation of something that already existed, and the schedule reflects that difference.
What Hasn't Changed While Both Projects Run
This is the part that gets lost when construction news travels through a headline. The main clubhouse, at roughly 60,000 square feet with its multiple dining venues, isn't part of either active project. It was already renovated in an earlier phase of the club's capital plan, along with the private Beach Club sitting on 200 feet of Gulf shoreline. Neither of those buildings is closed, scaffolded or reduced in hours because of what's happening at the Piazza or on the South Course.
Tennis, the existing Sports Club, both pools and the golf learning center are all operating on their normal schedule. The North Course is playable. The clubhouse kitchen is running its usual service. For a resident whose week revolves around a lap swim, a tennis match and dinner at the club, the actual felt disruption from $38 million of steel and a full course rebuild is close to zero, because the club built its sequencing around protecting exactly those routines.
Membership at Mediterra remains capped at 450 golf members across the club's 36 holes, a limit the club has held for years specifically to protect tee time availability. That cap doesn't move because of construction. It's a structural feature of how the club has always run, not a response to the current build cycle.
Mediterra isn't the only private club in the Naples-to-Fort Myers corridor putting real money into non-golf amenities right now. Reporting on the regional trend has pointed to projects like Bonita Bay Club's proposed $110 million clubhouse redevelopment as part of a broader shift among private clubs toward wellness and social space alongside golf. Mediterra's own history backs that pattern up. The club has been through this kind of reinvestment cycle before, with a mid-2010s renovation that touched both courses, added lighted bocce courts and expanded the Tavern's kitchen and outdoor seating. The current build is bigger in scope, but it isn't a first for the property.
What makes this round notable isn't the price tag. It's that a club running two simultaneous, multi-month construction projects has managed to keep every amenity a resident uses on a normal Tuesday open the entire time. That's not the version of "under construction" most neighborhoods experience, and it's worth knowing if you've been wondering what those cranes near the Piazza are actually for.
If you're curious how a project like this at Mediterra fits into the bigger picture of what's happening across North Naples' private club scene, The Abreu Group follows these communities closely and is glad to talk through what it means for anyone with questions about the neighborhood. Schedule a Private Consultation anytime.
