- October 30, 2026
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Brian McCarthy has had his share of setbacks, in life and business. He’s a disabled Vietnam veteran exposed to Agent Orange. He’s had quadruple bypass surgery. He’s a cancer survivor.
And in business, a Florida chain of pickleball clubs he co-founded shuttered after five years. Launched in 2019, McCarthy's goal with the business, dubbed The Pickleball Club, was ambitious: invest $180 million into opening 15 high-end pickleball centers across Florida. Through 2024, two had opened, one in Lakewood Ranch, one in Port St. Lucie. But in December 2024, a week before Christmas, the entire operation shut down.
McCarthy, in a recent interview, says The Pickleball Club, with a membership-centric business model, failed for some classic business reasons: too much debt on the land purchases and growing too soon, too fast, without the infrastructure to support it. There were other reasons, too. “The financial strategy didn’t work very well for us and in hindsight,” McCarthy says, “I underestimated how competitive the market was and I underestimated how many people are willing to play outside and wouldn’t pay to play inside.”
Now, at 81, McCarthy is back in business again — trading pickleball dinks for boat docks.
His new business is Gold Key Boathouse, an indoor, inland boat and RV storage facility. Preliminary work is underway on the first one, what McCarthy calls a $22 million project on Butler Avenue in Sarasota, off US 301 and three miles north of downtown Sarasota and the bayfront. Construction is expected to begin in the 2027 first quarter and take 10-12 months. The location is projected to have room for 350 spots, with at least 75% dedicated to boats and the other portion, on the ground floor, available for RVs.
Like he did with The Pickleball Club, McCarthy is thinking in multiples for Gold Key. He hopes to build at least 10 across Florida, and is currently seeking investors to raise at least $5 million. He says he has already backed the venture with $1 million of his own money. (The costs go beyond the land and construction; consider, to cite one example, McCarthy says a forklift for the facility in Sarasota will cost from $850,000 to $1 million.)
“Most people won’t do something at 81 like this,” McCarthy says, “but I really believe in this project.”
McCarthy, in the interview and an investor prospectus, says the crux of the Gold Key model is to fill a market need. “I really think there’s an imbalance of the demand equation with boat storage here,” he says. “It seems like everyone is complaining there’s no place to put your boat.”
Gold Key’s research backs that: There are 50,500 boats registered in Sarasota and Manatee counties as of 2025, the company says, citing Florida FIsh and Wildlife Conservation Commission data. And there are 7,500 west slips and dry racks combined, its data shows — good for one space for every seven boats.
McCarthy says other boat storage facilities feel the supply pinch, too. Officials at the Sara Bay Marina on US 41, for example, told McCarthy they get a call a day for wet and dry slips they can’t fill. “They told me I will have 80 boats right away,” if we open as planned, McCarthy says.
The second key to Gold Key, McCarthy says, is location. The idea is to be off the water so land, construction, insurance and other costs are lower — but not too far from the water. McCarthy says he worked on a redevelopment project at the Bird Key Yacht Club in Sarasota, and permitting and other costs squeezed margins to the point where he won’t do something like that again. “They’re too difficult,” he says. “It’s very challenging to develop on the water.”
The Butler Avenue location for Gold Key is in Sarasota County, just north of the City of Sarasota line. McCarthy says he is under contracts to buy the parcels that make up the site, just under 4 acres, for about $3 million. The project’s use is approved for the site, as is the 65-feet height; McCarthy plans to complete the permit approval process after closing on the land.
The height aspect is an integral element of the project. “The key to making it work economically is you have to be able to build up,” McCarthy says, “and there are very few places in Sarasota you can do this kind of thing.”
Of course, being away from the water presents a separate challenge, in getting the boats from Gold Key to the bay or gulf. McCarthy, though, says it’s 10 minutes to the closest public boat ramp from the Sarasota site, and there are another 18 ramps within a 45-minute drive.
Location is only one part of the equation for Gold Key, McCarthy says.
For one, beyond boats, there will be 87 ground-floor spaces allocated for RVs and 60 trailer-only rack spaces. The trailer side is something McCarthy heard about often in market research. “By putting the trailer and boat together, I’m solving that problem for customers,” he says. “That will differentiate us.”
Another problem in the boat storage industry he plans to address with Gold Key is delivering high-end customer service. Customers can schedule to have a boat and trailer ready by an app and “hitch and launch” 24 hours a day. McCarthy says he also intends to lease out space for a boat repair person or company, in addition to having boat wash bays. The Sarasota location is projected to have about 10 employees when it opens.
One final feature to the model: The Key Club, an invitation-only private membership club, for, the club says, “events, programming and people who share the lifestyle.”
While McCarthy laments the collapse of The Pickleball Club, he has rebounded multiple times before, in his life and career. He originally wanted to be in the U.S. Air Force, but was denied due to a poor vision test. So he went into the U.S. Navy, where, at one point, he oversaw a 65-person unit that patrolled and provided security for Navy Seals in Vietnam.
More resilience? He desperately wanted to get an MBA from Harvard. He applied five years in a row — and received five straight rejections. In year six, he says, “they finally took me.”
After earning his Harvard MBA, McCarthy worked in engineering for a stint for auto pioneer John DeLorean in Michigan. He later owned some franchised Burger King locations and developed self-storage units in California.
McCarthy believes all these experiences, and the lessons learned from the Pickleball Club collapse, will help as he navigates the boat storage venture. And his pursuit of this business also answers a question he gets asked a lot: why not just retire and tell stories with his buddies? “I believe you need to have a purpose in life,” he says. “If you have a purpose in life you will live longer and be healthier.”
