Two Gates, Two Summers: The Beau Chêne Calendar You're Only Half Living

Which gate did you drive through this morning? Most residents answer without thinking, because it's muscle memory by now, a wave to the same guard, the same three seconds of waiting for the arm to lift. But Beau Chêne keeps three separate guard gates for a reason, and the one you use most tells you which version of this community you actually live in.

Late July into August is when that split becomes obvious, because the calendar on the golf and pool side of the property has quietly compressed into a run of last-chance events before the summer ends, while a completely different rhythm keeps running on the river with no overlap at all. If you've only ever paid attention to one side of the gate, you're missing half of what your dues actually pay for.

Three Gates, Not One

Beau Chêne Country Club sits on 351 acres in Mandeville, established in 1975, nestled among tall pines and the Tchefuncte River. Thirty-six holes of golf, a pool complex, tennis, pickleball, and fitness facilities with childcare all sit inside the same fence line, and the club's own description of itself leans on the phrase "the Northshore's most spectacular dining" as if the golf and the food and the water were all one experience. They're not, structurally speaking. The homeowners association staffs a Main Guard Gate, an East Guard Gate, and a Marina Guard Gate, each with its own emergency line, which is a strange amount of redundancy for a single community unless the three entrances are actually gatekeeping three different daily lives. With roughly 4,500 residents living just outside the Mandeville and Madisonville city limits near Lake Pontchartrain and the Tchefuncte River, that's enough people to sustain two parallel calendars without either noticing the other much.

The Pool Side Of The Gate

If your Beau Chêne is the clubhouse and pool complex, your summer has a name for almost every night of the week. The club runs three pools, one restricted to residents 18 and over, a large lap pool with a 12-foot deep end and diving board, and a small pool for young children, backed by a competitive swim team called The Sharks and an aquatics staff that treats the summer like a season with a defined start and finish. The Cabana keeps a menu of traditional and healthy options along with a full bar, and the main clubhouse runs a full-service restaurant under an award-winning chef and culinary team, one widely credited by the club's own event listings as Chef Hosie Bourgeois. Friday nights carry his name most directly. Recent Fresh Fish Friday menus have paired seared rare tuna on brioche with ponzu-pickled cucumbers, wasabi mayo, and lime cabbage slaw against a ginger-teriyaki salmon plated with stir-fry vegetables, sushi rice, and microgreens, which is a more considered menu than most people picture when they think "clubhouse grill."

Here's what that side of the gate actually looked like on the calendar this year, in the run-up to the school year:

That table only covers the events with fixed times attached. There's also been a separate, more informal tradition running on Friday nights at the pool itself. One recent posting billed a poolside session as a last Friday fun night featuring bingo and cabana food, described as the final chance to play before the season ends and the grand finale of summer fun. That's a different event from the Wednesday, August 19 Bingo Night in the clubhouse, which opened reservations on July 22 and requires a phone call to the club, since special event reservations can't be made online. Two bingo traditions, two rooms, three weeks apart. If you only track one, you'll miss the other by a night of the week alone.

The Water Side Of The Gate

None of that touches the residents whose Beau Chêne is the Marina Guard Gate. Marina Beau Chene sits on the Tchefuncte River with 153 total slips and room for vessels up to 60 feet at a fixed dock, and it runs on a completely different clock than the pool calendar. There's no bingo night on the docks. There's fuel, maintenance, and tide.

The marina has been under the same operators since new management took over in 2017 to upgrade services and build more of a community feel on the river. One of the current partners, Garrett Griggs, is an Air Force veteran and a native of Mandeville who has lived in Beau Chêne himself for more than ten years. The other, Jared Riecke, is a lifetime resident of St. Tammany Parish who graduated from LSU in 1994 before returning home to start his own construction and real estate businesses. Both men are Beau Chêne people running a Beau Chêne business, which is worth knowing if you've assumed the marina was some outside operator leasing space from the HOA. It isn't. It's neighbors running the water side the same way the club runs the golf side, just with almost none of the crossover you'd expect from two amenities sharing a mailing address.

Why The Calendar Compresses Right Now

The interesting part isn't that these two calendars exist. It's that the pool side of the gate doesn't wind down gradually. It accelerates. A season that ran at a normal pace through June suddenly stacks a backyard movie night, an aqua fit happy hour, an informal poolside bingo billed as a finale, and a formal Wednesday bingo night with three-week advance reservations, all inside about a month. That's not a community running out of things to do. That's a community deliberately building a closing sprint before families scatter back to school schedules, the same way it opened the summer with camps rather than easing into it.

Meanwhile the golf side of the fence keeps a separate fall calendar running that has nothing to do with any of this. The Professional Landmen's Association of New Orleans has its 2026 Annual Golf Tournament and Networking Event booked at Beau Chêne Country Club for Monday, September 21, bringing in Gulf Coast energy industry professionals from well outside the neighborhood for a day of tournament golf. The pool closes out its season in August. The golf courses keep hosting outside groups into fall. Two gates, two calendars, two definitions of when summer actually ends.

If You Want To Catch Both Before Labor Day

• Call ahead for the August 19 Bingo Night if you haven't already, since reservations opened July 22 and the club doesn't take them online.
• Get to a Fresh Fish Friday dinner while the current rotation of tuna and salmon dishes is still on the menu.
• Walk the docks at Marina Beau Chene even if you've never kept a boat there. It's the same 351 acres, running on a different clock.

Most residents settle into one gate's rhythm within their first year and rarely cross over. That's not a criticism. It's just how a community this size ends up feeling smaller than it is. But the two calendars running side by side, one built around a chef's Friday specials and a bingo card, the other around a fuel dock and a fixed slip on the Tchefuncte, are both part of what your dues are actually buying. Worth knowing which one you've been missing.

If you're weighing a move within Beau Chêne, whether that means trading a pool-side house for a spot near the marina or simply want a sense of what your home is worth on today's market, Felicity Kahn & Associates offers Beau Chêne homeowners a free home valuation, no obligation attached.