TAMPA - A Fort Myers man has secured $200 million in loans to purchase marinas in Tampa, Naples and Key West, and turn them into private yacht clubs for well-heeled boat owners.

The Tampa club, to be known as Tampa Harbour Yacht Club, will be on land now occupied by Bayside Marina and Rattlefish Raw Bar & Grill on West Tyson Avenue. Club members will purchase boat slips at the yacht club, instead of renting them, under a new phenomenon called a "dockominium" or "rackaminium."

How to interpret the big deal was hotly debated, however. A New York-based investment bank that arranged the financing said such a large investment shows big-money lenders believe in the economics and future of the dockominium trend, which is turning dozens - if not hundreds - of marinas nationwide into private ownership clubs.

Some advocates for boat owners, however, worry that such exclusive projects are putting boating out of reach for everyone but the rich.

On Wednesday, investment banking firm Granite Partners LLC announced it had secured $200 million in loans for a Fort Myers company called Yacht Clubs of the Americas. Granite Partners senior Vice President Dan Gorczycki wouldn't reveal the lender's identity, other than that it is a U.S.-based investment company that invests in projects worldwide.

Yacht Clubs of the Americas will use roughly $100 million of the new financing to buy the marinas and some adjacent land in Tampa, Naples and Key West, and use the other $100 million to turn them into exclusive yacht club properties, Gorczycki said.

In Tampa, the company is planning a new, state-of-the-art dry-dock facility to replace the existing facility. Also, Rattlefish Raw Bar & Grill will close to the public in about 16 months and become a private restaurant for club members, Yacht Clubs of the Americas Chief Executive Officer Steeven Knight told The Tampa Tribune in May. He did not return calls Wednesday.

A slip at Tampa Harbour Yacht Club is expected to run $125,000 to $600,000.

Gorczycki said the $200 million financing deal shows that lenders with deep pockets now see dockominium projects as a good investment. In the past, developers planning dockominium projects bought up just one or two marinas. Such small deals, amounting to perhaps $25 million, didn't interest big investors, Gorczycki said.

Yacht Clubs of the Americas is one of the first companies to propose buying several marinas under one corporate umbrella, he said.

The company has dreams beyond Tampa, Key West and Naples. Yacht Clubs of the Americas has opened a private dockominium club in Sanibel and plans them in New Smyrna Beach and Stuart, according to its Web site.

Others in the marine industries, however, are alarmed by the dockominium trend. Stan Johnson, president of Marinas International of Dallas, which owns Harborage Marina in St. Petersburg and several out-of-state marinas, said dozens of marinas - if not many more - are being converted into dockominiums nationwide. Still more are being sold to condominium developers. In either case, the public is losing its access to the water, Johnson said.

In Fort Lauderdale, which has seen its own dockominium rush, Frank Herhold, executive director of the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, wonders how many dockominiums Florida can handle.

"It seems like there's a feeding frenzy out there in terms of developers looking at dockominiums," he said. "But the fact of the matter is, I think we're going to see people hanging up the boat keys and picking up the golf clubs rather than paying five or six times the value of their boat for dockage."

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at (813) 259-7865 or msasso@tampatrib.com.