Tidewater's 400-Member Countdown

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Charleston's country clubs have waitlists. Tidewater has a countdown.

The new private club at 2201 Mechanic Street, up on the Neck, will stop taking members at 400, the Post & Courier reports. It had passed 125 and is adding about two a week.

I'm getting the walk-through Thursday from Ryan Covert, one of the partners, and I'm going in with one question. What makes a club worth joining while the line to get in is still short?

Run the math on that. Roughly 275 open spots at two a week is about 137 weeks. Call it spring 2029 before the door closes, assuming nobody panics. People usually panic when they hear the word cap.

Getting in costs real money. Per the Post & Courier, it's $4,000 to join and $325 a month in dues. Year one comes to $7,900. Bring a spouse for another $50 a month and you're at $8,500 before you've ordered a drink.

The $8,500 gets you Trackman golf simulators, pickleball courts, a sauna, a steam room and a cold plunge, according to WhatNow's spring preview. There's a cocktail bar and an outdoor patio, and the kitchen runs on bites from the Asalea chef.

The supper club side is supposed to stay busy too, with two to four dinners and pop-ups a month.

The pitch is a country club minus the starch. When the club announced itself in June, Holy City Sinner ran it as a less formal take on the traditional country club and a "third space" for work, food, sports and wellness. In practice, you can take a client call and then sit in a cold tub without changing buildings.

Ryan Covert is the co-founder named in the early coverage, with Jack Murphy as general manager and Molly Moore running membership. Mollie Bean's MB Within studio did the interiors and Frank Moses's FHM Construction built it out.

The calendar wandered a little. WhatNow said July. Holy City Sinner said mid-June. The Post & Courier says the doors opened in August. Summer, give or take. Nobody's docking points for a construction schedule in Charleston.

The neighborhood is the fun part. Tidewater is in the same pocket of the Neck as Over the Horizon Brewing, which took over the old Brewlab spot at 2200 Heriot Street, with Gustard's Custard next door. Over the Horizon beer was on the open bar at Tidewater's Kentucky Derby preview party, so the neighbors already get along.

That corner of the peninsula used to be where you went for a beer and a frozen treat. Now it has a private club with a steam room. That's the Neck in 2026.

More is coming. The Post & Courier reports the warehouse behind the club is slated to become a gym, run as a separate business, with a discount for members.

Here's how I'll be sizing it up. Golf sims, a sauna and a cold plunge are easy to copy, and plenty of gyms and bars around town already have some version of each. The room is the hard part. A cap only creates urgency if people actually want to be in there, which makes the membership itself the real amenity.

If Tidewater gets the crowd right, two a week turns into a waitlist fast. If it doesn't, 400 is just a number on a website. Applications go through tidewaterchs.com.

Sources: WhatNow (address, amenities, Asalea food, supper club, team, Derby preview, July target), Holy City Sinner (address, country club positioning, design and construction team, mid-June target), Charleston City Paper (Over the Horizon and Gustard's on Heriot Street) and the Post & Courier (pricing, member count, 400 cap, August opening, planned gym)