Business View Magazine Feb 2023

177 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 2 You don’t have to be a proficient golfer to play on Bonita Bay’s courses, and beginners are welcome. Fung maintains that many who start off with minimal experience will find themselves advancing their skills. Many of these are retirees who he notes will have more time to play due to their own schedule and the amenable weather conditions. The courses themselves are also set up for all levels, as McDonnell recounts, “What we have done here at the club, to be inclusive of the high handicapper, new golfer and also our scratch golfers, is when we redid the Bay Island golf course, we built tee it forward tees. When we did the Marsh course, we integrated par three tee boxes within all 18 holes of the regulation golf course, for a quicker round of golf for junior golf and things like that. With the newly opened Cypress golf course, we have expanded our tee selection from five to seven. And that, of course, includes another shorter tee for golfers of all abilities.” For those who want to learn from the best, the club has instructional staff including 18 PGA pros who are available to teach and train everyone from beginner to professional status level golfers. With significant investment into improvements to Bonita Bay Club completed or underway, Fung says the next project will be a major overhaul of the main clubhouse. “We are in a strategic planning phase right now to determine whether it’s a renovation and expansion or whether it’s a complete rebuild from scratch of the facility,” he conveys. “That’s the big one, and everything that is involved in what the club of the future looks like has to be considered. So, getting everything else done, that’s the last big project over the next 10 years.” Bonita Bay Club also has plans to introduce employee housing in 2023, something that no other private club in southwest Florida offers to seasonal staff. The project will convert a 10,000-square-foot sales center into accommodations for 42 individuals. Fung remarks, “It’s so new that the city doesn’t even have a zoning application BONI TA BAY CLUB