“There are way more people who want an amazing golf experience in the Miami region than there are available amazing golf experiences,” explains Alex Witkoff, the co-CEO of the Witkoff Group and a developer of one of the most unique new private clubs in the world.

In Hallandale Beach, Florida, just north of Miami, the Shell Bay Club is tucked on a prime piece of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Intracoastal Waterway. And golf is the focal point of the 150-acre luxury development, with a new championship course that demonstrates the delicate balance between supply and demand in a major market. Shell Bay is the first private club in the Miami area in more than two decades and the price of membership for what its founders are calling a “generational opportunity” is well over $1 million. And there’s a waiting list to get in.

“People want the best of the best and, given that there hadn’t been an experience like this delivered in a few decades and it won’t be replicated, the response has been extraordinary,” said Ari Pearl, the founder and president of PPG Development, another founding partner in the Shell Bay project.

“It’s been global in nature,” added Pearl, who has been a prominent figure in the South Florida real estate and development industry for more than two decades. “We have people from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. Also internationally, Europe and Asia, in addition to locally in Miami.”

The game of golf is unquestionably booming in popularity in recent years, but Shell Bay epitomizes the challenge of preserving golf on exceptionally valuable real estate in the heart of a crowded metropolitan market.

Consider that Melreese Country Club, about 20 miles away and the only municipal golf course in Miami (one of the most populous metropolitan statistical areas in the country), closed for good last year in favor of a redevelopment project that will include a Major League Soccer stadium, hotels, an office park, and a retail area with shops and restaurants. It’s a massive project, one that will create thousands of jobs and generate billions of dollars in rent payments to the city over the life of a 99-year lease. Melreese had a storied history and was a successful and beloved public golf course, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual net revenues for the city. But what is the realistic lifespan for a facility in such a prime location, on land next to Miami International Airport?

In that case, and with the push and pull between supply and demand, it was demand for land that won out over the demand for golf – due to dollars signs.

So, to make golf at Shell Bay Club viable in such a prime location, it’s become an outlier in several respects.

The first is the cost to get in.

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At well over $1 million, Shell Bay has one of the most expensive membership buy-ins of any golf club in the nation, the byproduct of what Witkoff says is a “vicious dearth” of golf in the market.

“Land is very hard to accumulate in South Florida,” he said. “I don’t see this ever being able to be replicated in the Miami region because I don’t see where else you would get this amount of land close to the ocean. So, for us there was a kind of once in a generation opportunity to deliver a state-of-the-art golf facility and then with so much more — residences, tennis and so on and so forth.”

Among the luxury amenities at Shell Bay, which is also partnering with Auberge Resorts to provide a 60-room boutique hotel and spa on property, is a tennis facility run by the renowned Bryan brothers that has courts with all four grand slam surfaces, not to mention pickleball and Padel courts. There’s a basketball court, batting cages, bowling alleys, a billiard room, and a 48-slip yacht club.

But the centerpiece is the golf course.

There was once another course on the property, part of the old Diplomat Golf Resort. That’s long gone, as all the original holes were blown up and sand-capped, with Greg Norman’s team adding elevation changes and creating a completely new design – one that includes an 18-hole championship course and a 9-hole Par 3 layout, along with a 12-acre, state-of-the-art practice facility. Every lake on property was moved, so Shell Bay’s golf course really was reconstructed from the subgrade up, and with 4,000 new trees added (along with 1,000 different plant species) every playing corridor has completely changed from what was there before.

With a variety of risk-reward shot-making options and waterfront challenges, the new course can stretch to over 7,200 yards, making it one of the longest in golf-rich South Florida. The property was designed with visions of hosting a professional tournament in mind — with contoured greens and sweeping Australian sandbelt-style bunkers — and the Norman ties certainly make a future LIV Golf event in Miami market a distinct possibility, especially when you consider that LIV golfers like Bubba Watson, Patrick Reed, Henrik Stenson and Lee Westwood are members.

“A No-Brainer”

Another unique element of the Shell Bay project that’s made keeping golf a component of the development a reality is the residential tower with 108 bespoke condominiums and penthouses. While more commonplace in some densely populated Asian countries, U.S. golf courses with a neighboring tower – whether residential, hotel or otherwise – is rare.

“Building a tower was a no brainer,” said Witkoff. “It’s very rare to have 150 acres in such a prime urban area within a major MSA. We’re able to build a tower and it makes sense to do it, more so than on a random Caribbean island or Montana or Wyoming. The opportunity to get this is unique.”

Residences are selling for between $2 million and $11 million, and while there’s a social membership to the club that comes with owning a home in the luxurious gated community, access to the golf course is separate. The course also won’t be an amenity for future guests of the boutique hotel when it’s completed.

A golf club with a membership costing more than $1 million is not common, by any means. But either is a new high-end course (and community) that’s water accessible in a bustling metro area like Miami. And it appears the demand is there at Shell Bay. For land and for golf.

“Golf is the background and canvas for the development,” said PPG’s Pearl. “The golf course is the backdrop but you’re also getting views of the ocean and the Intercoastal, with residences overlooking the marina and the tennis center. When you come through those gates, you’re in a real urban oasis.”