Bears Paw Country Club

Bears Paw Country Club is 297 condominium homes on the Gordon River, off Golden Gate Parkway. Its address is 2500 Golden Gate Parkway, and every home lies inside the City of Naples municipal limits rather than in unincorporated Collier County. Homes were built from 1981 onward, and the golf came earlier still. The course is the first Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the West Coast of Florida.

All 297 homes are condominium, and that includes the ones marketed as villas: they are units, not house lots. Seven separate condominium declarations cover them, so which of the seven applies to a home decides which association bills it and what that bill covers. There's no single community-wide fee.

Who bills an owner at Bears Paw?

Seven boards, seven budgets, seven sets of recorded documents: Bears Paw Condominium I is by far the largest at 180 homes, and Bears Paw Villas holds 50. Villas 5 holds 19, Villas 6 holds 11 and Villas 7 holds 10. The Village at Bears Paw covers 15 and Bears Paw Lakeview One covers 12.

Bears Paw Condominium I is specific about what it takes care of. "The Association provides pest control, biannual air conditioning maintenance checks, water and basic cable via fiber optic lines". That's one association of the seven, and the other six answer for their own homes.

Do you have to join the club to own at Bears Paw?

Golf membership isn't required in order to own a home here, and the course is open to members and their guests, to renters, and to reciprocal clubs. The club belongs to its members, in its own words "a private, member-owned country club community in Naples, Florida, home of the first 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course in Southwest Florida". The members took it over from the developer, and its own history page dates that. "In December of 1985, the Members officially took over and the first annual meeting was held in January of the next year".

How old are the course and the clubhouse?

Both are younger than the neighborhood around them. The members had the course completely rebuilt in a restoration begun in 2015: new greens, new bunkers, new irrigation, new cart paths, and every fairway, tee and rough regrassed. In 2018 they voted to replace the clubhouse and the fitness center: the old building was demolished that summer and a new one built in its place.

Can you keep a boat at Bears Paw?

Yes, but access runs through club membership rather than through owning a home, so a purchase here is not by itself what gets a boat onto the water. "Our members-only boat docks are situated along the Gordon River, providing direct access to the Gulf of Mexico". "Your boat may be safely secured and stored on one of our boat slips or kept on a lift", the club says. Kayaks, canoes, paddleboards and fishing lines go in from the same frontage.

What else can you play here?

Two Har-Tru tennis courts, lit for evening play, with four pickleball courts beside them and two bocce courts. The fitness center has cardio and strength machines, free weights and rooms for group classes.

What are the homes like?

They are attached and modest in footprint, with 2 to 3 bedrooms and sizes running mostly from about 1,300 to about 2,000 square feet. A small number of homes go above 4,000 square feet. Bears Paw Condominium I describes its own 180 homes as "six 2 story and eight 3 story buildings, the 3 story buildings have elevators". Sold prices here start in the $600,000s.

Every home has a garage sized for a golf cart, and the owner supplies the cart. The association's wording is that "each unit has a garage to house the owners own golf cart". Budget for one if you want to drive to the first tee.

What sits next to the community?

The Gordon River Greenway park adjoins the property, and Naples Zoo is about half a mile away. One name is worth keeping straight. The Landings at Bear's Paw is a different community, and none of its houses is one of the 297 homes. It has 22 houses of its own, built between 2015 and 2022, with its own association owning its common areas. Its land is not in the City of Naples, and what it shares with Bears Paw is a boundary line and part of a name.

What should you settle before making an offer?

Four things decide what this place costs to own, and a listing sheet answers none of them:

• Whether an owner has to hold a membership at all, and if so whether that duty attaches to the home or to the person who owns it.
• Any contribution a buyer owes on taking title, to the club or to the condominium.
• Which bodies send a bill to that address, on what schedule, and what each of those bills pays for.
• The structural condition of the building and the money set aside behind it. Construction started in 1981, and Florida makes buildings of that age prove their structure and fund their reserves. A board short of reserves charges its owners for the work.

The golf came before the houses: the ribbon was cut on 3 December 1980, homes followed from 1981, and the members have owned the club since 1985.