A tugboat pulls the Commodore Club, a $9 million indoor-outdoor social club and restaurant, down the Cape Fear River on its way to Wrightsville Beach in January. The club now resides on a custom-built barge at Wrightsville Yacht Club on the Intracoastal Waterway.

At 120 feet long and 30 feet wide, the club had to be built at a shipyard near the Battleship North Carolina in Wilmington while crews made the barge in Florida, said Bryan Thomas, president of club builder Monteith Construction. Wilmington-based Kersting Architecture designed the facility.

In the works for several years, the Commodore Club evolved from a napkin sketch, Thomas said.