A boater who pulled into the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club marina this May left a review that could have been written any time in the past four years: friendly dockmaster, well-kept slips, and construction everywhere around the clubhouse. That review is dated May 5, 2026. If you have lived in Lighthouse Point for any stretch of that time, you already know the scene. The concrete perimeter wall went up in 2022. The old clubhouse is gone now, after years of permit fights over exactly when it could come down. And the new one, the 45,850-square-foot building with the rooftop deck and the piano lounge, still is not open.
What is easy to miss, if you only clock the fencing when you drive past on NE 27th Court, is what happened to the club itself while its building disappeared. The membership roll did not shrink to match the empty lot. It grew.
A Decade, Not a Renovation
Terry Paterson bought the 10-acre property, then known as the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club Marina and Tennis Club, in July 2017 for $16 million. At the time it carried 192 memberships and a clubhouse built in 1961 that had, in the words of the club's own site today, "weathered over time."
The plan was straightforward on paper: demolish the aging clubhouse, build a new one of roughly 43,000 square feet, add about two dozen luxury townhomes to help fund the project, and modernize the marina and tennis facilities. A developer's agreement with the city took years to finalize. Asbestos turned up in the old building, requiring a county permit before removal could even start. The clubhouse closed to members in August 2022, and by the following spring the developer was warning commissioners that power to the vacant building would soon be shut off entirely.
None of that is unusual for a decade-long redevelopment on a small city's waterfront. What makes the Lighthouse Point story worth following is what came next.
The Fire Marshal Problem Nobody Saw Coming
Lighthouse Point does not have its own fire marshal, so plan review for a project this size falls to Pompano Beach. In late 2023, the Pompano Beach fire plans examiner looked at a clubhouse design the city's own Planning and Zoning Board had already approved for roughly 400 people and rejected the capacity figure outright. His read: with the outdoor spaces counted alongside the indoor square footage, the building needed to be designed for as many as 1,600 people, not 400.
That single determination sent the whole clubhouse back to the drawing board. Paterson called the redesign costly, and the timeline shows why. Plans that should have been headed toward a demolition permit instead spent most of 2024 cycling through structural, plumbing, electrical, and fire review, with the developer's team and city building officials trading comments while residents asked the commission, in public meetings, what was actually happening. One neighbor, Justin Schwantes, put it plainly to commissioners: "Keep your sense of urgency." Paterson, writing to residents that spring, offered his own version of the same frustration: "the last 5 percent push is always the toughest."
The lesson for anyone trying to understand construction timelines in a city this size is not really about yacht clubs. It is that a jurisdictional handoff, in this case a small city leaning on its larger neighbor for a technical review, can add a year to a project that already had its permits approved once.
The Club That Didn't Need Its Building
Here is the part that runs against intuition. By 2023, a year after the clubhouse closed and with the building sitting empty behind construction fencing, Paterson told the city commission that membership was adding three to 10 new families a month. The club had lost roughly 100 memberships from its 2017 count of 192, but it had rebuilt past that number to around 400, all without a functioning clubhouse to show prospective members.
What kept people joining was everything the building was never really the point of: a 78-slip deep-water marina that puts boats within a mile and a half of the Hillsboro Inlet, five Har-Tru clay tennis courts, a fitness center, and a travel calendar sending members to Hawks Cay, Bimini, and Ocean Reef. Those trips proved popular enough that outside businesses sponsored them, generating between $60,000 and $100,000 a year for the club even during the years its main building sat vacant. The club also kept its community giving running through the construction years, with support directed to South Florida Honor Flight, Arc Broward, Broward Pantry, and Habitat for Humanity, among others.
That is the detail worth sitting with if you have ever wondered what actually anchors a place like Lighthouse Point. It was never the architecture. It was the marina calendar, the tennis ladder, and a network of members who kept showing up whether or not there was a roof to gather under.
What's Actually There Right Now
If you are a member, or thinking about becoming one, the club's own current messaging is consistent with what that May 2026 review described: construction is ongoing, but the working parts of the club have not stopped. The marina continues to operate. The five Har-Tru courts are in use. The junior Olympic-size pool, the fitness center, the children's activity area, and outdoor dining are all listed as continuing through the build. What is missing is the clubhouse itself, the dining room, the banquet hall, the parts of the experience that require an actual roof.
What Changes Once the Doors Open
The new building, once complete, is a different scale than what the club offered before. Plans call for 45,850 gross square feet, split between 35,500 square feet of air-conditioned space and a 19,475-square-foot rooftop terrace. The banquet hall alone seats 280 and can divide into two separate event spaces. The 78 marina slips remain the anchor amenity, alongside an indoor restaurant, a piano lounge, and a card and billiard room.
For current members, the transition comes with a specific financial promise: no new initiation fees and no special assessments when the building opens, regardless of how long the wait has been. For anyone joining new, the club's own materials put the initiation fee at $35,000 to $50,000 as the project nears its final months, a figure the club says will more than double once membership reaches a 500-person cap it is calling the flagship limit. Whether that particular number holds by the time the clubhouse actually opens is the kind of detail worth confirming directly with the club rather than assuming from a website, given how many of this project's earlier estimates shifted along the way.
The Takeaway for Anyone Watching This Site
Nine years after Paterson's purchase, four years after the clubhouse closed, and with construction still visible from the docks as of this spring, the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club is a case study in how slowly waterfront redevelopment can move even when nobody involved is trying to slow it down. Financing gaps, an asbestos abatement, a cross-jurisdictional fire review that tripled the required capacity: each one added months, and together they added years.
What the club's membership numbers suggest, though, is that the building was never really what people were joining for. If you live in Lighthouse Point, that is worth remembering the next time you pass the fencing on NE 27th Court. The wait has been long. The thing people actually valued kept running the whole time.
For more on what makes this stretch of the Intracoastal distinct, from its marinas to its architecture, visit our Lighthouse Point neighborhood guide. And if you have questions about how a project like this one factors into waterfront property values nearby, the team at The Nelson-Putzig Team is glad to Talk to an Expert.
