A Luxury Motorsports Village Is Proposed for the Edge of the Everglades. Environmentalists Are Fighting It.

On a 531-acre site that once served as a secret warm-weather test track for Ford, Harley-Davidson, and Chrysler, sitting just north of Alligator Alley near Desoto Boulevard South and 34th Avenue Southeast in eastern Collier County, a new owner wants to build something nobody saw coming.

The project is called The Hyper Club. A post on the developers' Instagram page describes it as a sanctuary shaped by the spirit of motorsports, where driving, hospitality, and community converge.

Naples Racing Resort LLC, a Delaware-based limited liability company, purchased the site for $10 million in 2024, according to Collier County property records. On June 30, project representatives held a pre-application meeting with Collier County staff, filing for both a Planned Unit Development Amendment and a Growth Management Plan Amendment. According to the meeting notes, the site is approximately 531 acres.

County records show the proposed development could include up to 100 residences, up to 20 short-stay accommodations, individual car storage for club members, outdoor recreation areas, stormwater management ponds, and an expansion and redesign of the existing test track.

The South Florida Wildlands Association alerted its followers to the proposal in a Facebook post on July 23, just days before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed its public comment period on July 24. The Corps is reviewing the project's impact on wetlands under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

The Wildlands Association's comment letter to the Army Corps and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went quickly viral, garnering nearly 1,000 signatures almost immediately. The letter's central concern is the Florida panther.

The site sits immediately west of the 26,605-acre Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. To the south are wildlife underpasses. Nearby are the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, the Picayune Strand State Forest, which just completed a massive, multi-million dollar watershed restoration project covering more than 55,000 acres, and the 175-acre Dr. Robert H. Gore III Preserve in Golden Gate Estates.

The letter to federal agencies warns that if The Hyper Club is constructed, Florida panthers would be substantially displaced from the project site into adjacent developed areas and roadways, increasing the likelihood of vehicle collisions, which are already the leading documented cause of panther mortality in Florida. It also warns that displaced panthers, being highly territorial, would face increased mortality from aggression with other panthers forced out of their range.

The proposal also calls for draining on-site wetlands. Audubon Western Everglades policy director Brad Cornell said his organization is opposed to the project as proposed, citing what appears to be a large and insufficiently described residential component, a car racing track, and the destruction of over 142 acres of wetlands.

The test track was built in the 1980s when Collier Enterprises still owned the land. Ford Motor Co. first leased it for warm-weather and performance testing. In 2002, Collier Enterprises sold the site to Harley-Davidson for $6.5 million. In 2013, it was acquired by Chrysler Group LLC for $7 million, before sitting largely idle for years. Naples Racing Resort LLC purchased it in 2024 for $10 million.

Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, has known the test track for years. He said he never imagined someone would buy it and try to turn it into a high-end recreational community. He described the area as one of the premier wildlife corridors in North America and said compromising that habitat for a project like this seemed incomprehensible to him.

The site is also a major water source for the Picayune Strand State Forest. That restoration project, one of the largest Everglades restoration efforts in recent history, makes the hydrology of this specific site particularly sensitive.

The Army Corps of Engineers comment period has now closed. The Corps and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will review the project's wetland impacts before deciding whether to approve the requested Section 404 dredge-and-fill permit.

Ultimately, Schwartz said he expects Collier County commissioners to make the decisive call and wouldn't be surprised if the board approves the development. He noted candidly that federal agencies rarely revoke development rights once a project clears local government review.

The Hyper Club's path forward runs through a planned unit development amendment and growth management plan amendment, both of which require county commission approval. Given the environmental sensitivity of the surrounding land, expect this project to generate significant public attention at every step of that process.

NNN will continue to cover The Hyper Club as it moves through the county's review and approval process.

Information sourced from Naples Daily News reporting by Laura Layden, the South Florida Wildlands Association, Audubon Western Everglades, and Collier County Growth Management Community Development portal records.