For the nonprofit North Palm Beach Rowing Club, a planned boathouse is more than a building to store boats. It’s where the club’s young athletes can go work out, gather as a community, and plan for their future.
“A boathouse is more than a place to row — it’s where young athletes learn resilience, discipline and what it feels like to belong to something bigger than themselves,” said Jana Ronert, a member of the club’s board of directors. “The boathouse becomes the center of these kids’ worlds — a safe structured community environment that keeps them moving forward — on water and in life.”
To that end, the club is in the midst of a $4 million fundraising campaign to pay for a 13,300-square-foot boathouse on the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway in Juno Beach.
The club’s efforts to build the new facility are a partnership among several organizations that highlights the power of community collaboration.
They opened the North Palm Beach Rowing Club Boathouse Fund with the Community Foundation. The VoLo Foundation, which is headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, contributed a lead gift of $1.5 million. And the club has an agreement with Palm Beach County for the needed land.
In February, the club is holding its annual gala, where Oliver Zeidler, the reigning 2024 Olympic champion and 2025 world champion from Germany in men’s single sculls, is scheduled to give a keynote address.
Over the years, with support from the Community Foundation, the club has been able to purchase equipment, maintain the docks, and develop rowing programs for not just young athletes, but initiatives to work with wounded veterans, first responders, and children and adults with varying disabilities.
The club also runs a rowing program for breast cancer survivors. And Community Foundation grants have allowed it to offer scholarships to youths from underserved communities, Ronert said.
With its current initiative and the Community Foundation’s support, the club is looking to the future. A boathouse isn’t just a building — it’s an eco-system connecting generations of Palm Beach County and global education.
“They have really helped us propel our work that impacts these young athletes,” Ronert said.
Some of those young athletes have been able to take their rowing experience with the club to the next level at some of the most elite universities in the country.
Youth club members have gone on to row for Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Georgetown University, and others.
Plans call for construction to start sometime in the fall of 2026 and for it to be completed in about 18 months. However, the club is still working on raising all the needed money.
The vision is to build a program that mirrors some of the most successful rowing clubs in the country, including those at the collegiate level.
“We’re going to compete against them, and we’re going to win,” Ronert said. “We’re going to win state titles, national titles, and we’re going to send kids to the Olympics.”
But first, the club plans on to build a new boathouse.
Oliver Zeidler
