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Photo courtesy of Signature Homes.
Everlee Amenity by Signature Homes
Signature Homes’ $15 million, 30,000-square-foot amenity center for the Everlee community.
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Photo courtesy of Signature Homes.
Overhead shot - Everlee Amenity by Signature Homes
Signature Homes’ $15 million, 30,000-square-foot amenity center for the Everlee community.
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Emily Reed
Everlee Fitness Center
The fitness center in the Everlee amenity center overlooks the pool area. The fitness center has equipment for a range of fitness levels.
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Emily Reed
Everlee Multi-use Space
Residents living at Everlee can utilize the multi-use space for work meetings or gatherings.
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Emily Reed
Everlee Multi-Use Space
The design throughout the amenity center was meant to feel open and modern with multiple options for gathering.
When Signature Homes was designing the amenity center for Everlee, its latest resort-style community in Hoover, the company really wanted something to make it stand apart from typical amenity centers.
With the help of Nequette Architecture and Design, Signature Homes CEO Jonathan Belcher thinks they have accomplished that.
The new $15 million 30,000-square-foot amenity center, which fully opened in November, features a zero-entry resort-style pool that is 9,000 square feet. There are also pickleball courts, a putting green, a place to play corn hole, an indoor golf simulator, a large-scale game room, a pet washing station, indoor lounging and social clubhouses, outdoor grilling and dining areas, indoor and outdoor fitness spots, an outdoor social green space, a flex space for meeting rooms and social events, and a demo kitchen for potential cooking demonstrations.
“We have never built an amenity center to that scale,” Belcher said. “It was really trying an idea and seeing if it worked. Everlee is a large community, and we wanted to create a space that could easily accommodate the entire community.”
Belcher explained that Signature Homes wanted something based off the size of the Hoover Recreation Center. The concept was largely an experiment, and they wanted to “push the envelope” architecturally, he said.
“I think the concept of this particular amenity center is to ultimately bring people together,” Belcher said. “You have this community of people sharing a space and all walks of life, but the amenity center is this central location that allows people to come together and form a really beautiful community.”
Whitney Zickafoose, Everlee’s on-site property manager, said the amenity center has a space for everyone.
“What is so cool about it is you really have so many amenities at your fingertips where you really don’t have to leave the community,” Zickafoose said. “If you want to wash your dog in the pet washing station, you can do that here and not take them somewhere to have it done.”
Yet, at the same time, residents living in Everlee are very centrally located to many businesses along Alabama 150, she said.
The pool officially opened at the amenity center in July and was immediately popular with the residents already living at Everlee, Zickafoose said.
“It was just really neat to see so many in the community coming to enjoy the pool,” she said. “You could really tell it just brought people together, and it is really easy to enjoy because it is so beautiful. It was a wide range of people — from those that wanted to come and do laps in the morning to young parents with kids in the afternoon.”
The other features of the amenity center, both indoor and outdoor, were officially opened to the community in November.
An open house was held for those living in the community to come and take a look at all that is offered.
“We had a great turnout with a lot of people from the community just coming to check out what will be available to them,” Belcher said. “We were able to answer a lot of questions people had, which mainly stemmed from how they need to go about reserving certain spaces. We did have a lot of questions about the golf simulator and how people could utilize that. That seemed to be a really popular amenity.”
Inside the amenity center are large light fixtures and modern, upscale decor. “We wanted things to feel beautiful when you walk inside,” Zickafoose said. “Whether you are holding a Bible study for friends or a work meeting for coworkers, the spaces inside are meant to compel people to stay and enjoy it.”
The Everlee community is located between Lake Cyrus and Ross Bridge and is slated to have 2,344 housing units. Six hundred of those homes will be restricted to people aged 55 or older and people without children under the age of 18 living in the home, leaving 1,744 homes potentially with children.
The community covers 833 acres, with roughly 200 acres reserved for community green spaces, parks and trails.
More than 500 homes have been built so far, and 350 of them are occupied, Belcher said. Residents officially began moving into the Everlee community in 2023.
Two additional amenity centers will be built within the Everlee community, Belcher said. Primrose at Everlee has a projected completion date of summer 2026, and the Sage at Everlee amenity center is projected to be finished in the summer of 2027.
A playground will be completed in the spring of 2026, and a walking trail system is being developed that will connect the communities.
“I think what has been really exciting to see is people already living in the community making it their home,” Belcher said. “A lot of times when you picture these ideas, they are just concepts, and it may take a while to see them come to completion. Seeing a community form of people who have an active lifestyle and enjoy getting out and meeting their neighbors is something we are really excited about. It is exactly what we envisioned when we were coming up with the concept.”
