The Clubhouse at Lake Sconti has been the community's living room for decades, but the room you walked into in July isn't the room you walked out of last summer. Rename a bar, move a veranda, carve an event space out of what used to be the porch, and the whole week bends toward it. That's what happened here.
If you live in Big Canoe, you've felt this even if you haven't sat down to trace it. Trivia Night pulls a different crowd. Sunday brunch runs to 3. The Overlook has its own front door now. What follows is a resident's read on where the community is actually spending its evenings this August, and where the rest of the week is going in response.
What actually changed inside the Clubhouse
The building grew. According to the general contractor's project summary, Macallan Construction took the existing 28,800-square-foot clubhouse to roughly 32,770 square feet, adding covered patios, terraces off the bar, and a new veranda while converting the old outdoor pavilion into conditioned space. That's a 14 percent footprint increase, and it shows up almost entirely on the lake side.
The names to know if you're making a reservation this month:
- Mountains View Bar — the horseshoe-shaped bar that anchors the redesigned main floor
- Mountains View Terrace — the outdoor seating that used to be the Veranda, now with sightlines onto Lake Sconti and the golf course
- The Overlook — the former Veranda space, reimagined as a dedicated event room with its own entrance from the front of the building
- Black Bear Pub, Mountains Grill, Sconti Point Room, Dogwood Room — original names, refreshed spaces
The practical consequence: private events no longer bottleneck the bar. A wedding party can enter through The Overlook while a regular Wednesday dinner service runs uninterrupted at Mountains Grill. Residents who left mid-remodel over the noise-and-crowding problem should give it another Wednesday.
The dining rhythm now runs on a Tuesday-to-Sunday clock
Monday is dark. That's the first thing to internalize. Everything else works around it. Per the POA's current Clubhouse page, the schedule looks like this:
| Day | Clubhouse Dining |
|---|---|
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. |
| Wednesday | 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. |
| Thursday | 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. |
| Friday | 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. |
| Saturday | 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. |
| Sunday | 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. |
Read this closely and you'll see the community's real weekend. It runs Friday and Saturday nights until 9, then collapses to a Sunday lunch window that closes before most people are thinking about dinner. Tuesday is lunch-only. That's the day to walk in without a reservation and get a table on the terrace.
The Black Bear Pub keeps its own hours and remains, by policy, a property-owner room. If you want the after-round beer or the Angus burger at the TV end of the bar, that's still where you go.
What sits outside the Clubhouse doors this month
The Clubhouse renovation reshuffled the calendar, but the summer's other centers of gravity haven't moved. A short inventory of what's actually happening between now and the first cool nights:
The Beach Club at Lake Disharoon is still the low-effort answer to a hot August afternoon. The POA's amenities page describes it as a zero-entry pool with a lake beach, paddle boats, canoes, kayaks, and the 200-foot rock slide that is, empirically, the first thing grandchildren ask about on the drive up. The Marina on Lake Petit rents the fishing and boating gear you need for the same day at the larger of the three lakes.
The trail system runs 25 miles through the community, and Big Canoe sits inside an area recognized by Georgia Audubon as a nature preserve. If you've been out only on Wildcat and Jeep Trail, August's cooler mornings are the time to take the less-hiked spurs before leaf-peeping traffic arrives in October.
The clubs run through the summer, not around it. The Wildflower Bunch stages its Garden in the Woods tour in June and continues member-led programming through the warm months. The Big Canoe Hikers keep to their schedule year-round. The Rotary Club of Big Canoe meets the first three Thursdays of the month from 5:30 to 6:30 at various community locations, and it is one of the more direct ways new full-time residents meet longer-tenured ones.
The Chapel remains the community's non-amenity gathering point. The Comedy Ensemble's six-scene production, The Saga of the Big Canoe Kid, is on the calendar as part of the 250th independence anniversary programming. Written and produced by Jackie Agers, it is exactly the kind of insider-humor show that only lands if you actually live here.
What's coming next inside the gates
At the February 2026 POA board meeting, Big Canoe Company representative Mike Zeigler confirmed that the Choctaw homesite buyback initiative is nearing completion and that Choctaw Village will move into vertical construction in partnership with Rezide Properties, an Atlanta-based group that has been active at Lake Arrowhead. No timeline or unit count was published. If you drive past the Choctaw area this fall and see activity, that's what it is.
The larger context: Renew Big Canoe, the initiative that gave us the Clubhouse remodel, is closing out Phase I. The project website itself notes that as of the September 25, 2025 board meeting, the site will no longer be updated with any frequency and will operate as an archive. That is the community's own way of saying the big lift is done and the next phase will look different.
The clubhouse renovation and the Choctaw work are the two visible ends of the same three-year story. One is finishing. One is starting. Late summer 2026 is the narrow window between them.
A late-summer week, as residents are actually using it
If you're new to Big Canoe, or you've been traveling and want to reset into the current rhythm, here's a week that works with the calendar as it stands:
- Monday — Clubhouse dark. Trails, lakes, or the Wellness Center. Good day for a Jeep Trail loop before the heat.
- Tuesday — Mountains Grill open for lunch until 5. Walk in. Sit on the Mountains View Terrace.
- Wednesday — First Rotary meeting of the month. Dinner at Mountains Grill runs to 8.
- Thursday — Wildflower Bunch or Big Canoe Hikers programming, depending on the week. Chapel events often land here.
- Friday — The one night the kitchen runs to 9. Reservations recommended.
- Saturday — Marina in the morning, Beach Club with visiting family in the afternoon, Clubhouse at night.
- Sunday — Brunch closes at 3. Plan around it. Late afternoon at Lake Disharoon before the rock slide line thins out.
That is not a marketing itinerary. It's what the operating hours make possible.
The through-line
The obvious version of this post would be "the Clubhouse reopened." The truer version is that a community with a single central gathering point becomes a different community when that gathering point changes shape. Big Canoe now has more room, more entrances, and a schedule that finally reflects the way residents actually use the property. Trivia Night at Mountains Grill, a wedding in The Overlook, and a Wednesday round finishing with a pint at the Black Bear Pub can all happen at the same hour without stepping on each other. That was the point.
The rest of the summer belongs to Lake Disharoon, Lake Petit, and the 25 miles of trail. The fall belongs to whatever Choctaw Village turns into. Right now is the pause in between, and it is a good one.
If you're weighing whether to keep the second home or turn it into a primary residence, whether to sell into the current market, or whether Big Canoe still fits the way you want to live, Thomas Petrigliano and Carolyn Littell live here too. Start with a conversation about how the community is actually functioning this year, not how it looked on the last listing you saw.
