$14M Naples golf club renovation has big support — and fans

Countryside Golf and Country Club in Naples is starting its second season in temporary facilities amid a major renovation of its amenities. Yet its residents are happier than ever.

Sound impossible? While club management had hoped residents would tough out the renovation for the rewards it would bring in the end, they didn’t anticipate the kind of enthusiasm they saw.

“Every February, we do a comprehensive satisfaction survey,” says Joe Smith, general manager and chief operating officer of Countryside Golf and Country Club. “I expected the survey to be realistic based on what we were offering, right? I didn’t expect survey scores to increase in any particular area, and that’s what happened.”

Two things helped make that a reality — a pair of factors that could help any business dealing with a situation of instituting big changes for a demanding customer group: transparency and a willingness to get creative. When it comes to the latter, management wanted to both keep residents happy while amenities were limited and keep its core staff employed. After visiting other local clubs undergoing renovations and seeing how they handled it, they came up with a plan.

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Countryside would offer lunch every day and dinner a few nights a week in a multipurpose room while the main dining room was being renovated. The club wanted to continue having events like tribute concerts that residents enjoyed but needed a place to do them. So they shifted them outside under a temporary tent that’s up from October through April, and residents loved these new “parking lot parties.”

“In an ironic way, it really brought the community together,” says Smith, 42. “You’d see everybody walking down at five o’clock with their beach chairs…We have members who are reaching out to us from up north excited about coming back this year. They’re excited about coming back to this and I’m like, are you sure? And they’re asking, when’s the first parking lot party? That I would have never expected.”

Here's where some of that transparency comes in. “We had an idea of what we could do, but we weren’t really sure what we could do, so we set realistic expectations,” says Smith. 

Club management decided to schedule events on a month-to-month basis to assess what worked and what didn’t. “We got ourselves to a point where we were comfortable trying new things, and as long as the support was there, we could continue to kind of push the envelope,” says Smith.

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Transparency has been an objective for the club throughout the entire renovation process. Countryside operates off a 10-year strategic plan, and its Wellness Center, tennis courts, bocce courts and golf course had already been renovated before the pandemic hit. Management and the club’s board decided to push ahead with the rest of the plan and surveyed residents about what else they would want if money was no object.

Outside dining and enhancements to the kitchen were some of the must-haves. “We identified the key levels of importance,” says Smith. “And we prioritized based on what the community told us, knowing that we weren’t going to satisfy everyone.”

Resident Mike MacDonald was on the committee that led the master plan study and was appointed chair of the renovation oversight committee. At multiple community meetings and town halls, the recently retired builder and architect helped guide residents through the entire process, from determining a budget and hiring a contractor to the money the community would need to borrow for the more than $14 million-dollar project.

“Having Mike and his background, the community just has a ton of trust,” says Smith. “When you do a project like this of this magnitude in these communities, people can be worried, rightfully so. I think having Mike and his background has just really stabilized a lot of those feelings throughout the community, which has been huge.”

The club sends out monthly reports about the status of the project and shares frequent video updates with residents. A one-page budget tracks all spending on the renovation project at the community, which has 1,133 single-family homes, condos and villas. 

“So they see where all the money’s going,” says MacDonald, 66. “The community is seeing the progress.”

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“We’ve just been so transparent through the whole thing,” adds Smith. “We have communicated every step of the way.”

When the more than two-year “Countryside 2.0” project is completed, residents will have a revamped bar and dining room in the clubhouse plus a new outdoor bar located near the new resort-style pool that will add a much-needed laid-back community gathering spot. “There’s a social aspect that we lack here because we don’t have a casual space,” says MacDonald. “You had to make a reservation for the dining room, and you sit at your table and just be quiet…It’s going to open up a social component that a lot of people are looking for.”

As icing on the cake, Club Benchmarking recently ranked Countryside in its top-five strongest clubs in the country after auditing 20 years of Countryside’s financials. As a result of this audit, Countryside’s board unanimously approved a $750,000 investment to build four lighted pickleball courts and additional parking beginning in the summer of 2025.

Smith knows homebuyers have a lot of choices in the Naples area. “Obviously, we want to be able to offer a lifestyle package that is competitive or that outweighs everyone in the area,” he says. “And the other thing that we have that a lot of these brand-new communities don’t have is where we’re located. We’re seven miles from downtown. So we obviously want to capitalize on that fact.”