If you've been watching the surveyor trucks and the fresh grading along Highway 44, you already sense it: the next chapter here is being drawn right now. This month, a stack of preliminary and final plats landed on the Greene County Board of Commissioners' agenda, and together they give us our very first, public look at something incredible - the homesites wrapping the new Reynolds Fenmoor golf course and the short course taking shape near Cherokee Point. A few miles up US-278, an entirely different kind of community, Lake Society, is quietly repositioning itself to become the most serious active-adult competitor Lake Oconee has seen in years.
I spent some time digging through the public filings so you don't have to. Here's what's coming, what it means for the market, and why I think the smart money is already paying attention to a corner of the lake most buyers haven't even heard of yet.
⚠️ Public Data Disclosure: everything below is drawn from publicly available county planning documents (preliminary plats, final plats, and a Development of Regional Impact (DRI) report) plus the developers' own published materials. These are early-stage documents. Lot counts, acreage, road names, and amenities can and do change before anything is recorded or offered for sale. Nothing here is an offer to sell or a guarantee of what will ultimately be built. Think of it as an informed first look, not a brochure.
Our First Look at the Lots Around Reynolds' Eighth Course
Let's start with the headline. Reynolds Lake Oconee announced Fenmoor Golf Club as its eighth course, and it's a big deal on its own merits. The layout is by acclaimed architect Steve Smyers - the man now joins a design roster at Reynolds that already includes Jack Nicklaus, Tom Fazio, Rees Jones, Bob Cupp and Jim Engh. Fenmoor sits on roughly a 140-acre tract at the northern tip of the 12,000-acre community, on terrain shaped by Lake Oconee's headwaters and Richland Creek. Smyers is routing as many as nine holes right along the shoreline, with lake views possible from as many as fourteen, and it's being built as a walkable course - a first for Reynolds. A new clubhouse by BLUR Workshop, plus a putting course and an expansive short-game complex, round it out. The course is slated to open in late 2026.
That's the golf. What's new - what we're seeing for the very first time in these publicly-accessible filings - is the residential fabric being stitched around it. Four separate plats tell the story:
Fenmoor, Section I — a final plat covering 20.58 acres and 11 single-family lots, and it includes the first stretch of a new spine road, Hardin Parkway.
Fenmoor, Section II — a final plat of 25.08 acres and 18 lots, carrying Hardin Parkway forward into its second section.
Fenmoor, Section III — a preliminary plat of 13.42 acres and 9 lots. These are the ones to circle. The plat shows them fronting Lake Oconee and tucked directly against the golf course along Marshland Parkway, with Cherokee and Highland roads nearby. Lot sizes here run from about 0.80 to just over an acre, averaging right around 0.90 acres.
Add it up and, in this single batch of filings, Reynolds has laid out roughly 38 new homesites in the immediate Fenmoor neighborhood alone - the first inventory anyone has seen in what will become one of the most talked-about addresses at the lake. And these are exactly the kind of lots people move to Reynolds for: gently sloping, golf-adjacent, several with genuine lake frontage, all inside the gate.
Here's the part worth underlining for buyers: none of this is for sale yet. These are preliminary and final plats working their way through the county - the paperwork that has to exist before a shovel-ready lot can be released. Based on the golf timeline and the stage these filings are at, my expectation is that we likely won't see these homesites formally released for purchase until later in 2027. Now is the time to begin thinking about putting your home on the market and finding the right builder; let's connect to have that discussion!
The Short Course Near Cherokee Point
Now for the piece I find genuinely interesting, because it's the kind of thing you only catch by reading the plats closely.
Alongside the Fenmoor sections, there's a much larger filing: Hardin Ridge, Section I - a preliminary plat spanning 87.30 acres with 57 lots, laid out along Marshland Parkway, Hardin Parkway, Shortcut Drive, Overcup Drive, Sweetvine Lane and Sedgewick Overlook, with a dedicated 4.72-acre amenity parcel and an eye toward the Harbor Club side to the east. Lot sizes are a step up from the Fenmoor sections, from about 0.68 acres to a full 1.5 acres, averaging just over an acre.
But the detail that jumps off the page is in the plat's own summary table, where the lots are grouped under the heading "Short Course Lots." That's not my label - that's how the developer's engineer categorized them. Read alongside Reynolds' publicly announced short-game complex at Fenmoor and Smyers' walkable design philosophy, it points to a new short course taking shape in this pocket near Cherokee Point - a second golf experience layered right into the neighborhood, not just a driving range. I want to be careful here: Reynolds has officially announced the 18-hole championship course and its practice facilities; the standalone short course is my inference from the plat language and the amenity footprint. But it's a well-supported one, and if it plays out the way the filings suggest, it changes the whole character of this corner of the property.
Between the Fenmoor sections and Hardin Ridge, we're looking at roughly 95 new homesites being platted around this new golf corridor. That's not a tweak. That's Reynolds opening a new front.
Why I Think Fenmoor is about to be the Address at Reynolds
Every few years at Reynolds, there's a neighborhood that goes from "where's that?" to "you can't get in." Right now, that energy is centered on Richland Pointe and Jumping Rock - Richland Pointe in particular has been marketed as "the Southeast's next favorite waterfront neighborhood," with some of the best lakefront sites the community has released in years, sitting between The National and Horseshoe Bend. Those are today's hot tickets, and deservedly so.
Here's my call: the next one is Fenmoor and its short course. The pattern is the same one that made Richland Pointe explode - a brand-new marquee amenity (there, the village and golf; here, a Steve Smyers championship course plus a short course), a fresh crop of golf- and lake-adjacent lots, and a first-mover window before pricing catches up to demand. The difference is that Fenmoor is even earlier in the cycle. Richland Pointe is releasing now; Fenmoor's lots likely won't hit the market until late 2027. If you believe, as I do, that a walkable Smyers course with nine holes on the water becomes an instant draw, then the homesites wrapping it are going to be some of the most sought-after real estate on the entire lake - and the people who understand that today are the ones who'll be positioned when the releases come.
If you own at Reynolds already and you've been thinking about a move within the community, this is the kind of shift that's worth a conversation now rather than after the first release sells through.
Lake Society: Del Webb Finally Gets Real Competition on Lake Oconee
A few miles away, on Madison Highway (US-278) in Greensboro, a very different story is unfolding, and it's arguably the most consequential one for the broader Lake Oconee market.
For years, the active-adult segment on Lake Oconee has effectively belonged to one name: Del Webb at Lake Oconee, Pulte's established 55+ resort community. It's been the default choice for buyers who want the maintenance-free, amenity-rich, lock-and-leave lifestyle near the water. But Del Webb is a finite thing, as it fills out its land and approaches capacity, the question has always been who's next?
The answer showing up in the county files is Lake Society at Lake Oconee, and this is the development I'd argue is Del Webb's first genuine major competitor on this lake. The latest amended preliminary plat (filed by Atwell, LLC, engineering the project for the developer) lays out a substantial community:
- 317.87 acres on Madison Highway, at the edge of Lake Oconee
- 559 total dwellings - 445 single-family homesites plus 114 multifamily townhomes and flats
- Nearly 39% of the site preserved as open space and common area
- A recent request to increase density, up from the 502 units originally approved - a tell that the developer likes what it's seeing in demand
The project's earlier DRI filing fills in the lifestyle picture and its origins: it was reviewed as "The Lake Society at Lake Oconee," proposed by Southwyck Homes as a retirement-oriented community, with a rezoning from lakeshore-residential and agricultural to Planned Unit Development. The amenity list reads like a resort: a clubhouse, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis and pickleball courts, boat docks, a kayak launch, a scenic overlook, and a walking-trail system - plus a two-story, 40,000-square-foot RV and boat storage facility, which is exactly the kind of practical touch active-adult lake buyers actually care about. The DRI pegged an estimated completion in 2027.
Reading the Lanier Playbook to see Where Lake Society is Headed
We're still early - this is the information-gathering phase, and the Oconee community's own marketing hasn't fully rolled out. But we don't have to guess in a vacuum, because Lake Society already has a proven model up the road at Lake Lanier.
Lake Society Lanier is a 55+, "elevated active adult" community built around the tagline "Life is better at the lake." It leans into the full resort package (boat slips and docks, a clubhouse with a restaurant, heated and resort-style pools, a racquet club for tennis and pickleball, an amphitheater, a fitness center, trails and lakeside gathering spaces) with a lineup of designer home models priced starting in the $600,000s and marketed to buyers trading home-maintenance for leisure.
Line that up against what the Oconee plat and DRI already show (the lakefront setting, the clubhouse, the pools, the racquet courts, the docks and kayak launch, the trails, the mix of single-family and low-maintenance attached homes) and it's reasonable to infer that Lake Society will bring its Lanier blueprint to Lake Oconee: a full-service, amenity-forward, active-adult community aimed squarely at the same buyer Del Webb has owned for a decade. If that's right, Lake Oconee is about to have real choice in the 55+ luxury-lifestyle category for the first time and competition tends to be very good news for buyers.
I'd add the usual caveat: the DRI described a retirement community with an independent-living component, while the current plat is framed around single-family and townhome dwellings with a density increase. Exactly how "active-adult" versus "all-ages" the final community lands is one of the details worth watching as the developer's plans firm up.
What it all Means - and the Timing
Put the three stories side by side and a picture forms. Reynolds is opening a brand-new, golf-anchored neighborhood at Fenmoor with a championship course, a likely short course, and roughly 95 homesites we're seeing for the first time - none of it for sale yet, and probably not until late 2027. Lake Society is scaling up to become the first serious challenger to Del Webb's grip on active-adult living. And all of it is landing in the same window, on the same lake.
For buyers, the takeaway is timing. The best positions in a place like Reynolds aren't won on release day - they're won by the people who understood what was coming while it was still lines on a plat. For sellers, especially existing Reynolds owners, this incoming supply and the buzz around Fenmoor are worth factoring into how and when you bring a property to market.
If you're thinking about buying into Reynolds ahead of the Fenmoor releases, weighing Lake Society against Del Webb for an active-adult move, or wondering what all of this does to the value of a home you already own on Lake Oconee, that's exactly the kind of conversation I love to have. Reach out anytime - whether it's buying, selling, or just getting a current, honest read on your property's value, I'm glad to help you get ahead of the curve on what's coming to the lake.
Justin Cullifer, Realtor
Phone: 706-817-4426
Email: [email protected]
