In February 2025, the Milton City Council approved a routine-looking consent item: a disbursement agreement sending $225,000 in state funds to the White Columns Gated Community Association for engineering and design work on the Glenover Drive Lake Dam, the structure that holds back Glenover Pond in the Chicken Creek watershed. Most people touring homes in White Columns that spring never heard about it. The item sat buried in a council agenda between a print-services contract and roundabout safety upgrades. But it says something about this neighborhood that no listing sheet will tell you: the homeowners association here doesn't just collect dues for landscaping and gate clickers. It owns and maintains a dam.
That single fact frames most of what's worth knowing about buying or selling in White Columns this year, because 2025 and 2026 quietly reshaped three separate layers of this community at once. The physical infrastructure the HOA is responsible for changed status. The ownership of the country club next door changed hands entirely. And the resale numbers, read at face value, tell a story that doesn't quite add up until you understand why.
An HOA That Manages More Than Landscaping
White Columns is a gated community of 129 homes set among a golf course, horse farms, and Glenover Pond, according to the community's own homeowners association. Homeowners pay an annual assessment of $3,987.01, billed in four installments of $996.75 due at the start of January, April, July, and November. That figure covers Thursday trash and recycling service, architectural review of exterior changes, and the shared infrastructure of the gated community itself.
| Payment | Amount | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | $996.75 | January 1 |
| Q2 | $996.75 | April 1 |
| Q3 | $996.75 | July 1 |
| Q4 | $996.75 | November 1 |
| Annual total | $3,987.01 | — |
The Glenover Drive Lake Dam is part of that infrastructure, and it's mid-project. The February 2025 council item authorized the state funding transfer for engineering and permitting. By May 2026, the association was back in front of the council for a phased disbursement of those same state funds, covering additional engineering, design, and permitting work on the dam. Fifteen months after the state money was first approved, the project is still in design and permitting. It hasn't reached construction, and the full cost of whatever the engineering study eventually recommends isn't yet public.
That matters to a buyer for a specific reason. State grants of this kind typically fund engineering and design work, not necessarily the construction that follows. If the completed study calls for repairs beyond what the state funding was scoped to cover, the association's 129 homeowners are the ones who absorb the difference, usually through a special assessment layered on top of the standard quarterly bill. Before you close on a White Columns address, it's worth asking whether the dam study has produced a construction estimate yet, and if so, how the board has discussed funding it.
The Club Changed Ownership While Buyers Were Still Touring
The golf course and clubhouse next door operate under a separate structure entirely, and that structure changed hands in the middle of 2025. On June 10, 2025, Arcis Golf closed on the acquisition of White Columns Country Club along with two other well-known North Atlanta clubs, The Manor Golf & Country Club in Alpharetta and The Country Club of the South in Johns Creek. The seller was Invited, the club operator formerly known as ClubCorp. Arcis assumed day-to-day operations the following day.
"The acquisition of three historic clubs... brings a fresh dimension to our diverse collection of private, daily-fee and resort properties."
That's Arcis Golf founder and CEO Blake Walker, describing the deal as part of the company's strategy of owning premier properties in key expansion markets, with stated plans to invest capital across all three clubs. Invited's outgoing CEO, David Pillsbury, framed the sale as the end of his company's long stewardship of the properties.
For a buyer weighing whether to add a country club membership to their homeownership costs, that ownership change is worth more than a footnote. Arcis operates close to 80 golf facilities nationally and has stated plans for capital investment at White Columns, which could mean upgraded amenities over time. It also means the fee schedule, membership tiers, and reciprocal privileges you hear about on a tour today may shift again as the new owner settles into the property. White Columns Country Club currently lists Golf, Racquet, and Social membership categories through Arcis, but the club's own materials direct prospective members to the membership office for current dues rather than publishing a fixed schedule. Comparable private clubs in the Milton area report initiation fees across a wide range, often cited between $40,000 and $100,000, which is exactly why a written, current fee schedule from the club itself belongs in your due diligence file rather than a number quoted secondhand by a listing agent.
What The Median Price Doesn't Explain
Layer a dam project mid-permitting and a clubhouse under new ownership onto the resale numbers, and the 2026 market data for White Columns starts to make more sense.
In March 2026, the most recent full month of closed sales this small market has produced, White Columns homes sold for a median of $1.6 million, up 25.1 percent from the same month a year earlier. Median days on market climbed to 42, up from just 12 days the year before, and only eight homes closed that month, compared with three the prior March.
On its face, a rising median price alongside a tripling of days on market reads like two contradictory stories at once: buyers paying more, but taking longer to commit. In a deep, liquid market that combination would be unusual. In White Columns, it isn't a contradiction so much as a reminder of scale. This is a single 129-home community. Eight sales is the entire dataset for that month. One or two golf-front or fully renovated estate closings can pull a median sharply upward without reflecting any broader shift in buyer appetite, and a slower average pace can simply mean fewer of those eight sales involved competing offers, even as the mix that did sell skewed toward the higher end of the neighborhood's range.
The live picture backs that read. As of early August 2026, White Columns has three homes pending at a median list price of $1.7 million, with an average time on market closer to 35 days, a pace nearer historical norms than the March figure alone would suggest. Any single month of data in a neighborhood this small is a sample, not a trend line.
Reading This Market With The Right Lens
For a buyer, that means anchoring an offer to actual recent comps inside White Columns rather than the neighborhood median alone, and asking pointed questions about both the HOA's plans for the dam and the club's current membership terms before assuming either cost is fixed. For a seller, it means recognizing that your specific street and lot type, golf-front, pond-adjacent, or interior, will shape buyer expectations more than any citywide or even neighborhood-wide figure, particularly while both the HOA and the club are mid-transition.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Tour
Is club membership required to buy a home in White Columns? The HOA and the country club are separate entities, and membership terms can vary by section and by when a given lot was originally sold. Confirm directly with both the HOA and the club whether a specific address carries any membership obligation before you write an offer.
Will the Arcis Golf ownership change affect dues for current members? Arcis has stated plans to invest capital across White Columns, The Manor, and The Country Club of the South, but current dues and any near-term changes should come from the club's membership office rather than a secondhand estimate. Ask for the current fee schedule in writing.
Does the dam project affect every homeowner, or just those near Glenover Pond? Based on the disbursement agreements filed with the City of Milton, the HOA covers dam-related costs through the community-wide assessment, not a sub-association tied only to waterfront lots. Every homeowner in the 129-home community has a stake in how the project is ultimately funded.
White Columns rewards buyers and sellers who look past the headline number, whether that number is a median sale price or a dues figure quoted in passing on a tour. The Doug Harden Group has spent years tracking exactly this kind of detail across Milton's gated and golf communities. If you're weighing a purchase or a sale here, schedule a private consultation and we'll walk through what the current club transition and the HOA's infrastructure plans mean for your specific address.