On a Saturday afternoon at Woodlake Country Club, you can hear pickleball paddles cracking on three new stadium-seated courts, watch golfers finish up on a course Golf.com ranked among the 16 best you can play in North Carolina, and grab a seat on the Maples Grill patio for a plate built by an executive chef with an award to his name. Walk another few hundred yards toward the community's namesake feature, and you'll find dry ground where a 1,200-acre lake used to be.
That gap between what's finished and what isn't is the actual story of Woodlake right now. The club rebuilt itself. Lake Surf hasn't come back yet, and if you live here or you're weighing whether to, the dam is the number worth tracking, not the clubhouse.
Lake Surf was the whole concept when the community was first developed in 1968, a private spring-fed lake meant to anchor a golf and lake destination in the Sandhills. The property changed hands more than once over the following decades, including a long stretch under German ownership groups starting in 1980, and deferred maintenance piled up. Hurricane Matthew broke that pattern violently in October 2016, when floodwaters breached the dam and forced evacuations in Vass. A Moore County Superior Court judge ordered the impoundment breached that following spring to protect downstream communities, and the state ordered the lake drained for flood control. It has sat empty since.
Two years before the breach, state regulators had already classified the dam as high hazard, a designation reserved for structures whose failure could cause death, damage major roads, or cause more than $200,000 in economic loss, according to reporting from CBS17. The community spent years in bankruptcy and foreclosure before Fayetteville businessman Keith Allison, through his family investment company Atlantic National Capital, bought Woodlake's assets outright at auction in 2021 for $3.5 million. Everything that's happened since traces back to that purchase.
The golf side moved fast once ANC took over. Architect Kris Spence, known for his work restoring Donald Ross and Ellis Maples designs, spent 2021 through 2023 rebuilding the Maples Course, originally laid out by Ellis Maples in 1971. The course reopened to Woodlake residents in a soft launch in September 2023, and Golf.com later named it the 16th best course you can play in the entire state, a notable placement given that Pinehurst alone has ten 18-hole courses in its own backyard.
The clubhouse followed. A new 3,500 square foot building now houses Maples Grill, led by executive chef James Regan, along with patio dining that looks out over the course. General manager Jeff Crabbe, a Pinehurst Resort veteran with more than two decades in the golf business, has been building membership from scratch since he arrived in August 2023. As of late 2024, that number stood at 115, up from zero.
More recently, Woodlake broke ground on its Pickleball & Fitness Complex: three outdoor courts with stadium-style seating, a fitness room overlooking the courts, and an event lawn connecting to the driving range for club picnics and gatherings.
Here's what's actually operating on the ground today, in the order it came back:
That's a real club, functioning at full capacity, four years after a foreclosure auction. It's also only half the promise Woodlake was built on.
The lake side moved on a slower, rockier timeline. Construction on the new dam was originally set to begin under Goldsboro contractor TA Loving, with an 18-month build projected. State lawmakers had committed more than $9 million toward the rebuild, a sum ANC had lobbied to secure. Then Tropical Storm Debby caused additional weather-related damage in August 2024, setting the project back further.
Rather than push forward with the existing arrangement, ANC completed what it called a comprehensive assessment of the original contractor and decided to rebid the work. Sequoia Services, based in Dunn, took over as general contractor, tasked with removing the existing structure and building a new labyrinth-style spillway dam in its place. Schnabel Engineering, which has been involved with the Woodlake dam since Hurricane Matthew, stayed on through the transition as project engineer.
Sequoia resumed onsite work in June 2025 with updated surveying and geotechnical testing, and crews fully remobilized by the end of that July. The most recent public update, from Sandhills Sentinel in late December 2025, confirmed that both the upstream and downstream cofferdams are now fully complete. These aren't decorative milestones. Cofferdams protect the spillway foundation and the active work zone while the real structure gets built behind them, which means their completion signals that Sequoia has cleared a necessary step before the labyrinth spillway itself can go in.
Security around the site has tightened accordingly. Woodlake officials report the dam site now sits under 24/7 video surveillance, with a five-camera system covering 360 degrees and facial recognition technology, and residents have been reminded to stay off unauthorized dam access roads while heavy equipment and deep excavations are active.
Meanwhile, ANC and the Woodlake Property Owners Association have been working through a less glamorous but connected task: clearing overgrown vegetation and silt from culverts around the community's front entrance and causeways to improve drainage during heavy rain, a direct response to the same flooding risk that started this whole saga.
Beyond the dam, ANC has been quietly working on something bigger. The company's own statement describes a comprehensive master planning process looking at how a future marina, commercial village areas, residential neighborhoods, green spaces, and walking trails will fit together as the community matures. ANC says it's studying zoning and unified development ordinance requirements and pulling ideas from other established lake communities, with a detailed master plan presentation targeted for release sometime in 2026.
That timeline lands squarely in the stretch we're in right now. If you live in Woodlake or you're watching the community from outside, this is the year that presentation is supposed to surface.
There's a financial marker tied to all of this too. Woodlake's own membership page notes that pricing is expected to increase in 2026 as momentum builds, even while the final phase of lake restoration remains underway. In plain terms, the club is betting the lake's return will justify higher dues before the lake has actually returned.
| Track | Current Status | What Changed Most Recently |
|---|---|---|
| Golf and clubhouse | Fully operational | Ranked 16th-best public course in NC by Golf.com; membership grew from zero to 115 |
| Dam and lake | Under active construction | Upstream and downstream cofferdams completed; crews moved into next construction phase |
| Long-range community plan | In development | Marina, village, and trail concepts expected to be released later in 2026 |
Reading these three rows side by side tells you something the glossy amenity photos don't: Woodlake isn't one comeback story, it's two running at different speeds, with a third one still on paper. The club side has already delivered on its promises. The lake side has delivered milestones, cofferdams, contractor stability, a funded budget, but not yet the thing everyone is actually waiting on, which is water.
If you're already in Woodlake, the practical takeaway is to keep an eye on two things this year: whatever comes out of Sequoia's next construction phase now that the cofferdams are in, and whether ANC's promised master plan presentation actually lands in 2026 as stated. Both will tell you more about where this community is headed than another round of amenity announcements will.
For now, the golf is genuinely good, the pickleball courts are busy, and the lakebed is still dry. That's not a contradiction. It's just where the timeline sits in August 2026.
If you've got questions about what any of this means for property here, or you're curious how Woodlake compares to other lake and golf communities across Moore County, Jamie McDevitt has spent three decades tracking exactly this kind of on-the-ground change across Pinehurst, Southern Pines, and the surrounding Sandhills. Let's Connect.
Jamie will take the time to understand your goals and will work tirelessly to help you reach them. Whether you are moving to the Pinehurst, Southern Pines area to play golf, swing a tennis racket, or simply run or walk through your neighborhood, let Jamie work for you.
