Woodlake's Late Summer 2026: Three Corners That Just Redrew Your Radius
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Ask a Woodlake resident where they went last weekend a year ago, and the honest answer probably involved the Sawgrass Expressway ramp at Royal Palm. Ask the same question in August 2026 and the map has quietly folded in.
Three separate projects finished within a few months of each other, each one at a different corner of the neighborhood. On their own, they read as ordinary local news. Stacked together, they collapse the daily radius for someone who lives off Riverside Drive or NW 108th Terrace into something almost walkable, and definitely drivable without ever touching a highway.
The Country Club of Coral Springs at 10800 West Sample Road is the closest amenity most Woodlake residents never used. That's changing, and not for the obvious reason.
The course itself is the headline the club leads with. The Country Club of Coral Springs now presents itself as a newly renovated 18-hole championship course, and a recent renovation redid all the greens to USGA specifications and boosted the yardage from the tips to nearly 6,505 yards. That matters if you're a golfer. If you're not, the meaningful change is next door to the pro shop.
The brand-new clubhouse has eight pickleball courts, a fitness center with personal training services, and a neighborhood bar and grill called Niblick's, and the club is one of the few courses that extends walking privileges to the surrounding community during off-peak times. Read that second half again. You do not have to be a member to walk the cart paths at low-traffic hours, which turns the course into a de facto linear park on the south edge of Woodlake.
The ownership context is worth knowing too. Bernie Moyle, an attorney who purchased the Country Club of Coral Springs for $4.3 million in 2022, was appointed chair of the Coral Springs Community Redevelopment Agency in March 2026. That's the same person who owns the club setting the CRA agenda that shapes what gets built along University and downtown. The club's reinvestment is not happening in isolation.
Anyone who lived here more than a few years remembers Angelo Elia Pizza Bar & Tapas at 5920 Coral Ridge Drive as the go-to for a Tuesday night that felt like a Friday. The space sat awkward for a while. As of this week it's something else entirely.
Ember & Vine, a new all-day dining concept from P Hospitality Management, opened in Coral Springs on August 3, 2026. It took over the former Angelo Elia location at the Sawgrass Center on 5920 Coral Ridge Drive, and the space was completely refreshed with updated finishes, new design elements, enhanced bar and dining areas, and a redesigned layout, featuring a full-service dining room, bar area, flexible group seating, and spaces for private events.
The people behind it have a track record in the county. Ember & Vine is P Hospitality Management's third Broward County restaurant, following Eddie & Vinny's Coastal Italian and Dear Olivia, and the group also operates Prezzo Boca Raton and Amante's in Deerfield Beach. The concept itself leans further west than the previous tenant. The team describes it as a Napa Valley-inspired, hearth-driven restaurant rooted in wine country rituals, leaning into fire-kissed cooking, curated wine lists, and a California-cool sensibility landing squarely in Broward.
Opening week has its own hook. Guests visiting between August 3 and August 9 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. receive a complimentary house cold brew or drip coffee, and the coffee program features beans roasted locally by 360F Roasters, a Coral Springs-based roastery. That last detail is the tell. A restaurant sourcing its coffee from a roaster three miles away is a restaurant staking a claim on being local rather than regional.
Cornerstone at N. University Drive has been the slow-burning story of Coral Springs dining for two years. It's now reading like a district instead of a collection of storefronts.
Mitch's Downtown Bagel Cafe has made its Coral Springs return at 3334 N. University Drive in the Cornerstone development, serving locally made bagels and spreads alongside matzo ball soup, omelettes, French toast, and pastrami sandwiches. That reopening filled the biggest weekend-brunch gap in the north half of the city.
Ahead of that, Big Whiskey's, an American restaurant originating in Missouri and known for its wide whiskey selection and classic comfort dishes, is joining the Cornerstone development as the second of three planned Big Whiskey's in South Florida, though the opening date hasn't been firmed up publicly. And Flora's Italian Eatery, from the family behind Flora Fine Foods, opened across from the Florida Panthers IceDen with a mix of food stations, market goods, and an upstairs bar and kitchen, which is another five-minute drive on the same corridor.
The point isn't that any single opening is transformative. It's that the three anchors sit at the three cardinal edges of the neighborhood, and none of them require the Sawgrass Expressway.
| Corner | Anchor address | What's new | What it replaces in your week |
|---|---|---|---|
| South (Sample Rd) | Country Club of Coral Springs, 10800 W Sample Rd | New clubhouse, 8 pickleball courts, Niblick's grill, walking privileges | The drive to Sabal Pines or a private club membership |
| East (Coral Ridge Dr) | Ember & Vine, 5920 Coral Ridge Dr | All-day dining, wine-country concept, local roaster coffee | The trip south to Fort Lauderdale for a real date-night dinner |
| North (N. University Dr) | Cornerstone: Mitch's Downtown Bagel Cafe at 3334, Big Whiskey's incoming | Weekend brunch, whiskey bar, adjacent Flora's near IceDen | The Boca run for bagels or a whiskey list |
The neighborhood's existing bones look different once the three corners are in place.
Woodlake's own perimeter is thinner on public green space than Turtle Run or Heron Bay, but the pieces are there. Wood Lake has a handful of small local parks ideal for children and families, and Chevy Chase North Park and Windings Park border the yards of several homes. Chevy Chase North is a walk from most of the interior streets. The Country Club's off-peak walking privileges effectively extend the neighborhood's green edge south across Sample Road for anyone willing to keep a schedule.
Commuting geometry hasn't changed, and it's the reason the new radius matters. Onramps to the Sawgrass Expressway are very close by, so those commuting to Boca Raton or Fort Lauderdale can get to work efficiently. That's the weekday. What shifted is the weekend, when the ramp used to be the default for anything worth doing.
Test the map against a normal week. See if any of these actually require the expressway anymore.
None of that touches a highway. A year ago most of it did.
Woodlake has always been priced as an affordable interior pocket of Coral Springs, not as a destination address. That pricing was built for a version of the neighborhood where you drove out for everything worth doing. The version being built this summer is a different product, even if the housing stock hasn't moved. Buyers walking the streets in the fall are going to feel it before the comps do.
If you're weighing a move, a refinance decision, or just curious what your specific block is doing while the corners fill in, Portia Voss and the Campbell Investment Realty team live inside these updates. Start with a current read on your home's value through our home valuation tool, or browse the rest of the Woodlake neighborhood page for what's actually listed today.
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