The Killearn Club's Courts Reopened Long Before Its Clubhouse Will

Drive past Shamrock Street on a Tuesday evening and you'll find golfers finishing rounds on ground that was almost sold off for houses ten years ago. Pickleball paddles are already clacking under a pavilion that didn't exist two years ago. Six tennis courts get booked out most weeknights. What you won't find yet is the clubhouse everyone in Killearn Estates has been waiting on since the old one came down in December 2022.

That gap between what's playable and what's still under construction is the story worth understanding if you live near the club. The Killearn Club didn't reopen all at once. It reopened backward, with the parts that get people outside and moving arriving years ahead of the part that gets the press release.

The Land That Almost Became a Subdivision

Killearn Country Club opened in 1967 as the center of what became one of Tallahassee's first master-planned neighborhoods. Its 18-hole course hosted 21 PGA Tour events and four LPGA Tour events over the decades, including the Tallahassee Open from 1969 to 1982 and its successor, the Centel Classic, through 1989. Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Gary Player and Chi-Chi Rodriguez all played rounds there.

In 2014, the club's then-owner closed the North Course, known locally as the Narrows, and sold part of that acreage to a residential developer. Killearn members and neighbors objected, and the subdivision never got built. By 2020, a group of members had incorporated as Killearn Golf Properties and pooled private funds to buy the club outright, mostly to stabilize its finances and stop the slide. In 2022, they sold it again, this time to David Cummings, a Tallahassee native and entrepreneur who committed his own capital to a full rebuild.

That same September, the Tallahassee City Commission approved restoring Open Space zoning on more than 260 acres of the property, a decision that locked the golf course into its current footprint and closed the door on any future development attempt on that land. The rezoning is public record with the city, and it's the reason the North Course's old acreage is now a golf course again instead of a rooftop count.

The following year, Cummings announced the club would be renamed The Killearn Club and that the reclaimed North Course land would become a new nine-hole layout called the Clover. Construction on the Clover began in early 2024. The same ground a developer once had under contract is the ground members are now walking with a scorecard.

What You Can Already Play, Right Now

The renovated 18-hole Championship Course, redesigned by golf architect Chris Wilczynski of CW Gold Architecture, reopened in the fall of 2024. Practice facilities now run on TrackMan and PuttView technology, the kind of shot-tracking setup you'd expect at a resort, not a neighborhood club built in the Johnson administration. The Clover nine sits alongside it on the land that was almost lost.

Off the course, the recreation build-out is finished and in daily use. Six Hydro-Clay tennis courts and nine pickleball courts share a 3,200-square-foot open-air pavilion with its own food and drink service. The pool has the same setup. There's a designated food truck area for club events, plus bocce ball and cornhole courts for people who'd rather not swing anything competitively. Member tournaments, social tennis nights and private coaching sessions are already on the calendar.

None of this waited for the clubhouse. It didn't need to.

The Membership Dues Reflect What's Missing

The club is accepting members now under two active tiers, Camellia and Ambassador, both of which carry course access today. The pricing on those memberships is where the phased opening shows up as more than a scheduling note. Until the clubhouse opens, both plans are billed at 60 percent of full monthly dues, and only half of the initiation fee is due at signing. The remaining half of that initiation fee isn't collected until the clubhouse actually opens.

In practical terms, the club is charging less for a membership that already delivers golf, tennis, pickleball and pool access, because the dining room and lounge aren't part of the deal yet. Anyone weighing membership timing has a real number to work with rather than a guess about how much a finished clubhouse might be worth.

What's Still Ahead

The piece everyone associates with a country club, the clubhouse itself, is the one still on the drawing board. Plans call for an 18,000-square-foot building in a classic Southern style with a wraparound porch, designed through a master planning process led by DAG Architects. Interior design work by HLGstudio is built around a blue and brown palette with wood detailing throughout. When it opens, the building will house a full restaurant and bar, private dining space and a pro shop, replacing the temporary arrangements members are using now.

DAG Architects' own project page, describing the build in 2025, put the clubhouse and remaining facilities on a 2026 timeline. Given how many times this project's schedule has already shifted since the 2014 closure, that date is worth treating as a target rather than a lock. What isn't in question is that the golf, tennis, pickleball and pool infrastructure is already open and doesn't depend on the clubhouse's completion to keep running.

The renovation is being funded with Cummings' private capital rather than public money, a detail confirmed on the club's own site and worth knowing if you've ever wondered whether tax dollars were involved in the rezoning or the rebuild. They weren't. The city's only role was the 2022 zoning decision that protected the acreage.

For a neighborhood that spent the better part of a decade watching its golf course change hands, get partially sold off, get bought back by its own members, and finally land with an owner willing to rebuild it from the ground up, the current state of things is straightforward. You can already book a tee time, reserve a pickleball court, or grab a table by the pool. The dining room with the wraparound porch is still coming.

If you're curious about membership tiers, the Clover's layout, or when the clubhouse timeline firms up, The Costantino Group keeps tabs on projects like this because they shape daily life in the neighborhoods we work in. Reach out anytime you want the latest.