Bonita Bay Club: Bay Island Course

The Bay Island Course at Bonita Bay Club is Arthur Hills' most demanding design at this five-course private club complex in Bonita Springs, Florida, routing 18 holes through tropical preserve landscape with strategic water carries and a demanding layout that plays to 6,841 yards from the back tees.

Bonita Bay Club's West Campus in Bonita Springs is a 54-hole complex designed entirely by Arthur Hills across three distinct courses built between 1985 and 1994 — the Marsh, Creekside, and Bay Island courses — representing the most concentrated collection of Hills's design work on a single property in Southwest Florida, and a member-owned golf community whose founding philosophy of environmental stewardship helped establish Bonita Springs as a destination for serious private club golf. The Bonita Bay development began in 1985 when David Shakarian, founder of the Bonita Bay Group, committed to building a master-planned community on 2,400 acres of what was then a rustic fishing village north of Naples. Shakarian's approach to the development emphasized environmental preservation as a genuine design principle, not merely a regulatory requirement — a philosophy that distinguished Bonita Bay's development model from the more aggressively built-out communities in the same market. Arthur Hills, the Michigan-based architect with deep roots in Southwest Florida private club design, was engaged to design all three courses on the West Campus.

The Marsh Course opened in 1985 as the founding golf facility for the Bonita Bay community. Hills designed the Marsh through the wetland landscape that characterizes Southwest Florida's coastal interior, with the fairways weaving through the tidal and freshwater marsh systems rather than filling them. The routing used the natural hydrological systems of the region as strategic and visual elements — an approach consistent with Hills's design philosophy of working with the land rather than imposing a uniform artificial character on it. The Creekside Course followed in 1989, providing a second 18-hole experience with a character distinct from the Marsh.

The Creekside plays from 5,756 to 6,742 yards depending on tee selection, offering one of the wider yardage ranges in the Hills portfolio and accommodating the full range of player ability within the membership. The creek corridors that give the course its name provide both visual interest and strategic water hazards across the routing. The Bay Island Course, which Hills completed in 1994, is regarded as the most demanding of the three West Campus courses. Playing to 7,045 yards from the back tees, Bay Island features water hazards, sand traps, and stands of oak and cypress trees that provide consistent challenge across its length — the architectural vocabulary appropriate to a course designed nine years after the Marsh, when Hills's West Campus approach had evolved and the membership's expectations for championship-quality golf had matured.

Together the three Hills courses on the West Campus give Bonita Bay Club members 54 holes of golf across three distinct design personalities on the same community property, with the natural landscape integration that defined the Bonita Bay Group's founding environmental commitments preserved across all three layouts.