Walt Disney once said, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
The dream of Beau Chêne Country Club is a story about courage. And it’s also about vision, one that transformed a particular stretch of Northshore into something designed, or rather, imagineered, into the planned paradise we all know and love today.
Long before the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway buckled the South Shore to St. Tammany Parish, this stretch of pine-sweet air had already earned its nickname: the Ozone Belt, a place where imagination, recreation, and hustle seem baked into the land’s DNA.
This ground has always been a kind of investment, first in survival, then in industry and restoration, and finally in a master-planned sanctuary of estates and neighborhoods. And rising above them all is Beau Chêne, one of the most coveted, luxurious, and historically significant neighborhoods, not only in Louisiana but throughout the South.
Have you ever wondered how it came to be? Why the streets here in Beau Chêne curve like calligraphy. Why the ponds seem placed instead of merely found?
The Blueprint Behind the Beauty
Part of the answer runs straight into Disney himself, or more specifically, into his brother Roy Disney.
When Disney World was taking shape in Florida, renowned golf architect Joe Lee was helping Roy Disney translate vision into fairways. Not long after, Beau Chêne brought Lee to the Northshore to help conceive the golf courses that flank our neighborhood streets. The same imagination that once turned swamplands into wonderlands found its signature echo here, where lakes catch sunlight as if they, too, were part of the original blueprint.
By 1897, this bend of the Tchefuncte was already something of a Magic Kingdom with Pineland Park offering the community a health resort, complete with cottages and a racetrack whose oval once traced part of what is now the Oak Course.
In the 1930s, William Penick built his riverfront estate, naming it “Beaux Chênes” (“Beautiful Oak”) beneath a canopy of live oaks, adding a modest three-hole course of his own.
Then, in 1972, Morgan Earnest and Lester Kabacoff assembled the Penick and Weiss tracts and commissioned a master plan that would transform estate land into a 1,250-acre community. By 1975, the Oak Course, designed by Lee, opened its fairways, turning decades of private river country into a shared Northshore landmark.
A Dream, Sketched in Stages
What distinguished Beau Chêne from the beginning was not just acreage, but artistic intention. The founders studied benchmark communities like Amelia Island and Hilton Head, imagining more than subdivisions. They envisioned a Northshore refuge that carried forward the area’s long tradition as a health resort destination, a place where families could cross the lake and feel an immediate shift in rhythm. Beau Chêne was designed, not as an escape from community, but as an extension of that impulse, a carefully planned environment where recreation, residence, and civic life could exist in balance.
Beau Chêne became a place that gave more than took, and over time, it evolved into part of the civic framework of Mandeville itself—a place that employs, stabilizes, and stewards this sacred stretch of land as an infrastructure partner.
Today, the Club employs between 150 and 180 people depending on the season, making it one of the larger private employers in Mandeville, with more than 20 additional 1099 team members working year-round.
Beau Chêne’s donation of property for the Highway 22 fire station and for Louisiana State Police Troop L did more than assist public agencies; it reinforced the safety and continuity of the entire corridor. Charity tournaments and thousands of donated golf certificates are more than goodwill gestures; they redirect private leisure into public benefit, turning recreation into revenue for schools, hospitals, and nonprofits.
Over three decades, it has placed more than 1,300 foursomes into the hands of charities and nonprofits, each certificate valued between $350 and $400, turning fairways into fundraisers.
In 2026 alone, Beau Chêne will host 16 charity tournaments, while also opening its practice facilities to the Mandeville High School golf team.
As you drive through the prestigious neighborhood, it can be tempting to think that what began in 1972 was just a real estate play. But when you get to know the ownership of the Club, you’ll discover that this neighborhood is more than a collection of unique houses. It’s an attitude, an atmosphere that frees us to breathe again. That spirit still lingers here as a family-friendly club where members and non-members alike can book weddings, events, and special occasion celebrations.
Modernizing the Magic
Over the last decade, Beau Chêne’s philosophy has translated into deliberate reinvestment into the community. The average age of membership has dropped by nearly ten years. Fitness facilities were moved and expanded by 300 percent. Pickleball courts were added inside and out. Childcare was introduced, infrastructure upgraded, irrigation systems rebuilt, drainage improved. LED lighting has been installed beneath the live oaks, double-pane glass now opens to the western exposure, and HVAC systems have been carefully repositioned for efficiency.
These are not glamorous improvements, they’re structural ones, born from a deep love of the people who live in our community.
Don’t get me wrong, Beau Chêne doesn’t suffer from a lack of glam or glitz. Every year, the Fourth of July fireworks light up our fairways, best seen from the pool deck. Community concerts at the Pavilion and Bingo nights draw regular crowds of 300 neighbors beneath one roof.
The Club’s founders once imagined New Orleanians crossing the lake for weekends of leisure. And that legacy is still alive. But even more beautifully, what this neighborhood has become to Mandeville is much steadier: a civic anchor disguised as a country club. A place where private membership supports public rhythm and economic impact moves in syncopated rhythm with the continuity of the neighborhood.
The Hidden ROI
Drive through the gates of Beau Chêne, and you’ll see investments hiding everywhere.
In an effort to help secure favorable utility rates and preserve the park-like character that defines the neighborhood, the Club donated to Beau Chêne the community’s sewer plant and water well. It also maintains 36 holes of golf, tennis and pickleball courts indoors and out, fitness facilities, aquatics, youth programs, child care, and summer camps.
During COVID, the Club’s kitchen pivoted to provide takeout service to all Beau Chêne homeowners, regardless of membership. In partnership with the HOA, Pavilion concerts and Fireworks on the Fourth of July were also opened to the community.
If the early chapters of this land were about survival and industry, the coming chapter is about a legacy of stewardship where private institutions like ours invest meaningfully in public ways.
A Legacy of Love
For centuries, the live oaks that stipple our neighborhood have outlived storms, industries, and generations of ambition. They’ve watched the ground shift to accommodate brickyards, racetracks, theme parks, and fairways, each chapter settling gently into the next. On this bend of the Tchefuncte, where investment is often tallied in quarters and balance sheets, the ROI of Beau Chêne Country Club is measured as much generationally as it is monetarily. It’s found in children who grow up beneath the same canopy their grandparents once admired and in institutions that strengthen and support the surrounding city.
If Walt Disney was right, that dreams require the courage to pursue them, I think he would have felt at home here in Beau Chene—a place shaped as much by the magic of his own family’s fingerprint as by the courage of the community that calls this Wonderland home.
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” - Walt Disney
That spirit still lingers here as a family-friendly club where members and non-members alike can book weddings, events, and special occasion celebrations.