Two press releases went out four days apart about the same building, and they do not agree on whether you can order a drink by the pool yet.

On August 6, Avenir's own announcement declared that the Great Egret Clubhouse had opened, listing a lobby lounge, a full-service restaurant, indoor and outdoor bars, and a resort-style pool with beach entry and spa among the amenities now in use. Four days later, GL Homes put out its own release for Apex, the neighborhood the clubhouse primarily serves, and said something different: the restaurant and the pool are "planned to open... in a future phase." Same clubhouse. Same week, essentially. Two answers to the question that matters most if you already live on the west side of this community: can I actually swim there this month.

What Both Releases Agree On

Strip out the pool and the restaurant, and the two announcements line up cleanly. The Great Egret Clubhouse sits on 13 acres at the corner of Northlake Boulevard and Avenir Drive, runs roughly 28,000 square feet, and its fitness and social wings are confirmed open by both sources. That means a fitness center, a group fitness studio, and an indoor sports complex anchored by a full-size basketball court are available now. An adjacent sports campus adds 12 pickleball courts and 9 Har-Tru clay tennis courts, an open play field, and a pro shop. Inside, residents have two card rooms, a teen room, a catering kitchen, and an outdoor party pavilion for private gatherings.

Avenir hosted a preview celebration for residents on Monday, August 3, with live music and a chance to meet the clubhouse's sports, spa, and management teams ahead of the wider opening announcement later that week. That sequencing, a resident preview first, a public opening announcement second, is itself a small clue that the building was being brought online in stages rather than flipped on all at once.

Open Now, Coming Later

Here is the breakdown as it stands based on both releases, side by side:

If you are planning a first visit around a poolside afternoon or a dinner reservation, call ahead. If you are planning around a pickup basketball game, a pickleball match, or a fitness class, you are almost certainly fine.

Which Clubhouse Is Actually Yours

Avenir is being built with a deliberate east-west split, and which clubhouse belongs to your neighborhood depends on which side of the community you live on. The original amenity center, the Avenir East Clubhouse, runs about 16,000 square feet and has been open for years, anchoring the community's earlier neighborhoods on that side of the property.

Great Egret, at nearly double the square footage, was built to serve the newer wave of neighborhoods filling in on the community's west side, including Apex and L'Ambiance. The size difference between the two clubhouses is not an accident. It tracks how much more building has happened on the west side in the past two years compared with when the original clubhouse was designed.

Two of Avenir's 55-plus neighborhoods sit outside this system entirely. Esprit at Avenir, built by Kolter, and Regency at Avenir, built by Toll Brothers, each operate their own private clubhouse rather than sharing Great Egret or the original east-side facility. If you live in either of those neighborhoods, Great Egret's opening does not change anything about your day to day.

Great Egret is also, by Avenir's own count, the third of four clubhouses planned for the full build-out. A fourth is still ahead, though nothing in the current announcements attaches a date to it.

A Pattern Avenir Residents Already Know

Anyone who watched the Town Center open this summer has seen this rhythm before. Publix anchored the opening while a string of confirmed tenants, including H&H Bagels, Carmela Toast and Coffee Bar, and Taki Kappo, filled in around it rather than opening on a single day. Great Egret appears to be following the same logic: get the parts residents will use daily, the gym, the courts, the meeting spaces, open first, and let the parts that require more finish work, a working kitchen, a fully tiled pool deck, come online after.

The clubhouse also took more than two years to go from groundbreaking to its first residents walking through the door. GL Homes and Avenir announced the groundbreaking in May 2024, and the doors did not open until August 2026. A building on that timeline being handed over in phases, rather than as one finished product on a single date, is not unusual. It is just something residents should plan around rather than be surprised by.

What to Actually Expect This Fall

The clubhouse itself is owned and operated by the Avenir Community Development District, a special district created under Chapter 190 of the Florida Statutes, not by any single builder. That matters for residents because it means the facility's rules, fee schedule, and any updates on which amenities are live come from the district, not from a builder's marketing team. The district publishes its clubhouse rules and current fee schedule directly, which is the most reliable place to check status before you show up expecting a swim.

If you live in Apex or L'Ambiance, the practical move this fall is simple. Book the gym, the courts, or a room for a private gathering with confidence. If your plan involves the pool or the restaurant, check with the clubhouse directly first. Both are coming. The two press releases from early August just do not agree on whether they are here yet.

For residents on the west side of Avenir, that is the real news this month: the parts of Great Egret you will use most often, the gym, the courts, the meeting rooms, are open and ready. The parts you might have been picturing for a Saturday afternoon are still catching up to the announcement.

If you are weighing what a home in one of these Avenir neighborhoods is actually worth once its amenities are fully built out, or thinking about how a west-side address compares to an east-side one now that both clubhouses are in service, Kourtney Pulitzer works this market daily and can walk you through what the finished picture looks like, not just the press release version of it.