Raymond Terrace Bowling Club will be the town's tallest building, planning documents lodged with Port Stephens Council reveal.
The three-stage $39-million proposal will include a six-storey hotel with 50 rooms, a restaurant, bar, gym, pool and 800-seat auditorium.
The project has been in the works for the past five years, and will also involve upgrading the clubhouse and the bowling greens.
Raymond Terrace Bowling Club chair Brett Gleeson said the club was approaching its centenary and the clubhouse was starting to show its age.
"It needs an upgrade, so we thought why not be ambitious," Mr Gleeson said.
"It's quite exciting for the town. Raymond Terrace hasn't had a development of this nature since the Marketplace Shopping Centre and that was built 20 years ago."
The clubhouse will be expanded and the interior will see "significant change", with a new contemporary design that "meets what the community expects of clubs".
The upgraded greens, hotel and function centre are all geared towards the club's ambition to host national and international bowling tournaments.
Raymond Terrace has a long history as a premier bowling club, being the first in the Southern Hemisphere to have covered synthetic greens more than 40 years ago.
The club was recently named the 2023 NSW club of the year after winning first and second pennant - the first club to ever achieve the feat of winning the top two grade in the same year.
The hotel will be "tallest building in Raymond Terrace" and allow the club to offer quality accommodation for major tournaments.
Mr Gleeson said the club wanted to more than double the size of its current 350-seat auditorium, to expand its entertainment options and tap into the conference-hosting market.
"We want to hold at least 800 people to give us a chance to host more significant events at the club," Mr Gleeson said.
"People see Raymond Terrace as being remote, but strategically it's very well placed for conferences. It's at the junction of two major highways and the airport is just 20 minutes away."
The development will be rolled out in three stages over the next seven or eight years, starting with the club upgrade, followed by the bowling greens and finally the hotel.
The club is expecting to start construction in 18 months, depending on how long the DA approval process takes, but "hopefully it will be sooner".
"Stage one will get going very quickly, that will take six to eight months, and then move on to stage two with the bowling greens, which will be a similar time frame," Mr Gleeson said.
"Then we can assess where we're at from an economic point of view and how well the club's trading. We're in a very healthy position where the club is trading well and we're debt free.
"We're doing as much of this as we can with minimal loans. The hotel is the biggest component of it, and we'll take a cautious approach to stage three as to when it happens."
The club turns 100 in 2032, and would like to celebrate the momentous occasion in the completed development.
"2030 is the tentative timeline we'd like to have it completed by, which is not that far away when you think about it," Mr Gleeson said.
The goal was to create a something the community could be proud of, Mr Gleeson said.
"This is what this is what the club needs but it's also what the community needs as well ... the population is growing, and the Kings Hill development is going to double the size of Raymond Terrace," he said.
"We're a very community-based and focused club, without the community where we're basically nothing.
"The more successful the club is, the more we can give back to the community, and that's what our aim is."
