Quail Valley Club members are a big step closer to racquet sports heaven.

A fourth club location at the intersection of Indian River Boulevard and 41st Street has been granted site plan approval by the county, and Quail Valley managing partner Kevin Given expects a building permit to be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

A detailed site plan provided by Given shows eight lighted pickleball courts, five padel courts, two bocce ball courts and two indoor squash courts.

“We will be the only club besides John’s Island to have squash,” Given says.

The new 8-acre club location, which is geared toward members who live and work on the mainland as well as racquet fanatics, will also include a full-featured two-story fitness center with lockers and showers, a six-lane lap pool, and a two-story retail wing with café, market, salon and spa offering redlight therapy, IV infusions and other treatments.

Outdoor exercise areas, a kids zone and playground, golf simulators and E-sports are part of the plan, too, along with a racquets building between two sections of courts that will have food service and terraced view seating.

There is extensive, wide-open parking around the perimeter of the site that will make it easy for busy members to get in and out if they want to squeeze in a workout or quick game of squash at lunchtime.

A croquet lawn and exhibition tennis court with bleachers that were included in the original plan for the facility have been deleted.

“We have croquet, which we just enhanced, at the golf club,” Given says, “and all our tennis will remain at the river club.”

There are seven tennis courts at Quail Valley’s River Club, but no pickleball, padel, bocce or squash.

Members are excited about the prospect of the new courts.

“Pickleball has taken over the sporting world,” says ONE Sotheby’s International Realty broker associate Cindy O’Dare, a longtime Quail member. “For us to have our own pickleball complex with other racquet sports is just amazing. Leave it to Kevin to come up with something great like this for the members.”

Given, a longtime and highly successful country club impresario, has multiple goals for the facility. Besides slaking members’ thirst for racquet sports, it will make club life more accessible for members who live or work on the mainland, including doctors and administrators at Cleveland Clinic, which is just half a mile away.

“It will also be so helpful to realtors working on the mainland,” says O’Dare, who leads the top-selling O’Dare Boga Dobson team at ONE Sotheby’s. “It will be a place to stop in and grab a sandwich when we are showing property and a place to take clients out to lunch after a showing.

“Being members of Quail gives us a certain cache and everybody on my team belongs to the club.”

“Many of our members have offices off the island and about eight percent of our members live on the mainland,” says Given, who expects that percentage to increase.

He says a number of members have purchased homes in Costa Pointe, a new DiVosta subdivision rapidly filling in across the street from the club location, where more than 35 homes have sold this year at prices up to $925,000. He’s also had numerous inquiries about Riverfront Groves, a GHO Homes subdivision in the planning stages that will be built next to the club.

He is keenly attuned to the rapid growth of the county and gentrification of Indian River Boulevard and wants his club to ride that wave, and “not be entirely beholden to the barrier island.”

Given says the new location will capture additional revenue, too.

“If our members are playing pickleball at Pocahontas Park and getting something to eat or drink afterward with their friends, we are missing out. I would rather have them buying muffins and coffee or smoothies and sandwiches at their own club.”

The new facility will also enable the club to expand its membership a little bit. Given said there is “an eight or nine year” waitlist for golf memberships, but adding another swimming pool, a second workout facility, additional dining options, a spa and all the racquet sports will open up some room for additional social members.

Given says his goal with the new location is to build something that will benefit a generation of club members.

“Everyone is looking to get healthier,” he says. “We have more data at our fingertips and are more conscious of the need for exercise and recreation. We have members in their thirties up to their nineties, but overall it is a younger membership, with an average age under 60. They are very active, and this will open up new options for them.”

Given has been working on the project for several years. When he found the location he wanted, he approached GHO president Bill Handler to go in on the purchase of a 37-acre parcel of former citrus land in the southeast corner of the Indian River Boulevard/41st Street intersection.

“The owner didn’t want to sell the land off piecemeal, so we bought it together and did a one-time split at closing, which the county allows,” Given says. “We took 8 acres, and Bill took 29 acres for his subdivision.”

Handler, whose multiple subdivisions in the area have a lot to do with the upscaling of residential real estate along Indian River Boulevard, did the land clearing for both projects by agreement with Given.

GHO’s Riverfront Groves, a 72-home luxury subdivision, will not be formally associated with the club, but Handler says proximity to the club works to his advantage.

“I am a member at Quail, and it is fantastic. What Kevin has done at the River Club and Golf Club is world class. To share some affinity with Quail’s quality and reputation will be a huge advantage in selling new homes.”

Given said the new club facility will be built in two overlapping phases. He expects to break ground on phase one later this year, with phase two getting underway about six months later.

The first phase, which will include all the racquet courts and some other elements, is slated for completion 15 to 18 months after building starts. He expects the entire project to be complete within two years of groundbreaking.

“We don’t want to drag it out,” he says. “Members will be able to use the courts while we are finishing the second phase.

Given said the architecture at the new location will harken back to “1940s modern,” with lots of glass and openness that harmonize with the busy nature of the facility.

Renowned country club architect Peacock + Lewis is the designer.

“All our locations have a different style of architecture, carefully chosen to fit into the places where they are built,” Given says. “The golf club has that Shinnecock look, while the River Club is more sort of old Rhode Island or even Nantucket style, and The Pointe has more of a Colorado or North Carolina mountain look with all the stone.”

Given doesn’t have a construction contract yet, so there is no precise cost number, but he says, “It is fair to say that our investment will be in the $25 million range for a fourth, high-quality location.

“Due to our financial position and prospects for future growth, we are able to build this with no assessment to current members.”

“Quail Valley began in the year 2000 under the vision and guidance of Steve Mulvey, who had deep roots in Vero Beach dating back to his family owning part of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers,” according to Quail’s website. “Partnering with Kevin Given, along with 30 founding members, they developed what is one of the most unique club concepts in the country.”

Given and Mulvey, who passed away in 2017, opened their renowned golf club on 400 mainland acres in 2002, the same year they bought 10 acres on the Indian River Lagoon that had been the Riomar Bay Yacht Club.

Quail’s River Club, which is a centerpiece of island life, opened on July 4, 2003. It offers members “a 43-slip marina, overnight lodging, tennis, fitness center and spa, lap pool, tiki bar and multiple dining outlets.”

In 2014, Mulvey and Given bought the old Lobster Shanty restaurant at the end of Royal Palm Pointe, across the Indian River Lagoon from the River Club.

In 2016 they opened The Pointe, a 47,365-square-foot waterfront complex that includes a restaurant, lounge and hotel for the exclusive use of members and their guests, all with sweeping water views.

Fast-forward eight years and, after lots of planning and due diligence, Given bought the racquet club site for $3.9 million. Barring unforeseen difficulties, he expects the new club location to be finished and fully available to members by the end of 2027.

“Kevin is a great, intuitive leader, a visionary,” says O’Dare. “There is no better club in Vero Beach.”