Tucked next to the Fish Fry Shack on Poe Avenue sits a building most visitors to Sullivan's Island have never noticed and most residents drive past without a second glance. It is a few thousand square feet, plain-faced, not much to look at from the street. It has no dinner reservation system, no wine list, no view of the water. It has been there since 1946, and for a stretch of the past decade it sat mostly empty.
That building is the Island Club, and it is the only piece of real estate on this three-and-a-half-mile barrier island that was built for one purpose: giving neighbors somewhere to be neighbors.
Sullivan's Island is not short on places to eat. Between Poe's Tavern, Home Team BBQ, Sullivan's Fish Camp, The Longboard, High Thyme, Mex 1 Coastal Cantina, and a handful of others along Middle Street, this stretch of coastline has built a real reputation for its food. What it has never had much of is unclaimed, unticketed space where residents gather simply because they live here. That gap is what makes the Island Club's slow comeback worth paying attention to, and it is what makes this Saturday, October 17, more than just another fundraiser on the calendar.
The Building Neighbors Almost Lost
The Island Club opened in 1946 as a modest social gathering spot in a community that has always had more natural beauty than built infrastructure. For decades it filled a real need. Then, as islanders will tell you, it drifted. By the mid-2010s the building had gone quiet, sitting mostly unused while the rest of the island's social life migrated to restaurant patios and private backyards.
Club President Trey Sedalik has been blunt about what was at stake. Speaking to a local news crew in 2025 about the renovation push, he put it simply:
"This is the only community center on Sullivan's Island."
That is not a marketing line. It is a fact about how little shared civic space exists on an island where land is scarce and most of what gets built goes toward homes, not gathering places. When Sedalik talks about the Club, he is not describing an amenity. He is describing the one room on the island where a birthday party, a wellness class, or a kids' event can happen without someone having to rent it, drive off-island for it, or host it in their own living room.
What $4,500 Started, and What $500,000 Finishes
The town of Sullivan's Island owns the Island Club building, and in 2023 it kicked in $4,500 to get basic repairs moving. That covered a start. It did not come close to covering a finish.
The full renovation plan, drawn up by an architect the club's board engaged, runs to roughly $500,000. The list of what that money buys is not glamorous, which is part of the point. It is a porch. It is an ADA-compliant ramp and parking space. It is hot water and insulation, neither of which shows up in a photo but both of which decide whether a building can host anything reliably. It is finishing out the bathrooms, the bar, and the interior fixtures that a decade of light use had let slide.
As of last year's fundraising update, the club had raised about 20 percent of that goal. The gap between $4,500 in seed money and a half-million-dollar target is the real story here. A building this small does not need much to function, but it needs enough, and closing that distance has become a project the community is funding one event at a time rather than waiting on a single grant or a town budget line to cover it.
The Restaurants Come to the Clubhouse
The mechanism for closing that gap has a name: Taste of Sullivan's Island. The first one, in 2024, raised around $20,000 for the renovation fund. Last year's event, in 2025, sold out, proof that residents will show up and pay for the chance to support a building that serves no one but them.
This year's event runs Saturday, October 17, from noon to 3 p.m. at the Island Club, 1452 Poe Avenue. Tickets are $100 through sullivansislandclub.org, with children under 3 admitted free. What makes the event work is the same thing that makes the island's food scene notable in the first place: the restaurants themselves are the fundraiser. This year's lineup includes tastes and sips from:
- Home Team BBQ
- Sullivan's Fish Camp
- Poe's Tavern
- The Longboard
- High Thyme
- Mex 1 Coastal Cantina
- Dunleavy's Pub
- Island Coastal Lager
- Republic Ice Cream
- the Wine Shop
- Rebel Rabbit High Seltzer
Every one of those names normally competes for the same visitor and second-home dollars that keep Middle Street busy from spring through fall. For one Saturday afternoon, they are all pouring and plating in the same small building, working toward the same $500,000 number, for a room that will never appear on anyone's dinner reservation app.
Showing Up for the Only Room That's Actually Yours
Membership in the Island Club is not open to just anyone with a Sullivan's Island mailing address of convenience. It is reserved for current residents and for those who lived on the island within the last 50 years, a detail that says something about what the club is trying to protect. Annual dues run $350 for a family or $250 for an individual, and membership includes use of the building for one private event a year, plus the option to host or attend additional gatherings open to the membership.
That eligibility rule matters more than it might first appear. On an island where second-home ownership and short-term turnover are part of daily reality, the Island Club has drawn a line around who gets to claim this particular room. It belongs to the people who actually live the island's day-to-day, not to the market passing through it.
The renovation is not finished, and the fundraising is not finished either. But the direction is clear. A building that sat idle for the better part of a decade is being brought back one porch, one ramp, one bathroom fixture at a time, funded largely by the same restaurants that make this stretch of coastline worth visiting in the first place. If you live here, October 17 is your chance to be part of that math. Buy a ticket, eat well, and put your $100 toward the one piece of real estate on Sullivan's Island that was never built to impress anyone passing through.
If you are weighing a move to Sullivan's Island or thinking about what ownership here actually looks like day to day, from the beaches to the bar at Dunleavy's to a clubhouse that residents are rebuilding themselves, Crossman & Co. knows this island from the inside. Schedule your free consultation and let's talk about what life here really looks like once the visitors go home.
