Re-Berth: The Return of the Pontchartrain Yacht Club

by Susan Owens
photography by Thomas B. Growden

There is no question that the Pontchartrain Yacht Club is the epicenter of sailing and all manner of boating on the northshore. At the club, new sailors are born and old salts have learned and perfected their seamanship skills since the humble beginning of the club back in 1967.

Almost 40 years later, the ill winds of Hurricane Katrina wiped the original club building off the map and inspired the members to dream big. In no time at all, the members of the board assessed the damage. Declaring a total loss, the city fathers said, “Take it down.” And the insurance company paid up. The vision for the best little yacht club on the Gulf Coast called for more money, however. Fortuitously, the club garnered a Small Business Administration loan at four percent interest for 30 years, which nudged the project along. The building committee then went to the members and asked for an increase in dues.

The membership bought into the concept of a new and improved waterside home for their club and agreed to a nominal monthly increase in dues. And, most admirably, they pledged their precious weekends and after-work hours to completing the interiors and landscaping. Club members volunteered hundreds of hours, painting, building the bar, completing trim work, planting and watering and even cutting the trees, storing the wood to dry and milling the lumber to complete the bar.

Meanwhile, back at the drawing board, big plans were brewing. Architects Vaughan Sollberger, Lynn Mitchell and Mike Piazza studied the now vacant spit of earth nestled up to Lake Pontchartrain at the end of Lakeshore Drive in Old Mandeville. This premier location, at the end of a long public promenade and across from a popular fishing hole with docking for transient boaters, called for high design.

Because of its location, the building would be vulnerable to the effects of wind and water running amuck in nature; it had to be able to withstand every possible ferocious confluence of the elements. Furthermore, the members, who were investing both money and muscle in their clubhouse, wanted it to look great. And—oh yeah—they hoped the building would still be standing at the end of Happy Hour, a venerable Thursday evening tradition of the Pontchartrain Yacht Club!

So, first things first. Raising the main floor of the clubhouse to the government-mandated 16-1/2 feet above sea level, on 202 pilings, with 1,000 yards of concrete, the contractors secured the structure to endure the winds and waters of a 500-year flood. “Not a refuge of last resort—more like a refuge of first resort,” Commodore Kelvin Troughton jokes.

Rising to the challenge of creating a relaxed, friendly clubby feeling, the designers wrapped the clubhouse in expansive covered verandas. And even on a record-breaking hot August afternoon, the steady sea breezes and the gentle hum from the ceiling fans moved the air and kept everyone from swooning in the heat. A real Deep South experience.

Wide square pine columns support the metal roof and the second floor, which houses reception rooms, boardrooms, and a well-appointed caterer’s kitchen called a warming kitchen. Business offices and the “members only” bar are located at opposite ends of the compass points that are artfully carved into the tile on the foyer floor. “The members requested that the bar feature views of the lake, just like in the old clubhouse,” Commodore Troughton notes.

And they got it. The bar and the main party rooms are connected to each other and open onto the porch with views of Lake Pontchartrain. Hoping to entice the surrounding community to make the clubhouse its party destination, the Regatta Room is designed for catered weddings and other events.

Everywhere you look, there is evidence of artful detailing. Even the smallest touches reveal a fine aesthetic sense: brass door handles from the original clubhouse, the rhythm of the fence reflecting details found in the surrounding Old Mandeville neighborhoods, the stainless steel ship’s light wall sconces, rocking chairs on the front porch, the exposed galvanized pipes. Some are nautical, and all are mighty nice.

And since no yacht club would be complete without a swimming pool, kids splashing and beautiful people sunning themselves, you might say that the Pontchartrain Yacht Club has it all. And they did it all in record time.

From the symbolic groundbreaking day, August 29, 2006, with the mayor observing the first piling being driven, until the frenzy leading up to and surrounding opening day, July 4, 2007, the Pontchartrain Yacht Club leaders have taken the high road. With verve and moxie, under the watch of a dedicated and enthusiastic board of directors, they have rebuilt their home port and created one classy clubhouse, an accomplishment that none of the other fourteen yacht clubs washed away by Hurricane Katrina along the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coasts, have managed to accomplish.

The new clubhouse is matched by new growth in membership. With a 25 percent increase since Katrina, the club boasts approximately 200 members, about 100 of whom are life members.

And trophies? Yes, the yacht club proudly displays the traditional silver loving cups, ship’s wheel plaques and evidence of successful participation in local and national regattas. But, to date, their most powerful icon is the Pontchartrain Yacht Club itself, anchoring the end of Lakeshore Drive where Mandeville meets the water. Impressive.