Northern Hills This Summer: Three Clocks Are Running, And They Don't Match The Calendar
Most summer guides to a San Antonio neighborhood read like a checklist: pool, park, tacos, done. That version of Northern Hills is true, and it is also useless if you already live off Scarsdale or Higgins and have watched the same summer for years.
The more accurate read is that Northern Hills in the summer of 2026 is being paced by three institutions on three different renovation clocks. The community pool, the golf course, and McAllister Park are each in a slightly different phase of change, and if you time your week to those phases, the neighborhood feels bigger than it usually does.
Every longtime resident knows the summer anchors. What has shifted this year is that all three of them just moved.
The rest of this post is about reading those clocks well.
McAllister Park has had dirt trails for decades. Locals have ridden the Blue Loop, the Red Trail, and the pump track long enough that a new signpost feels like news. This spring the park got something categorically different.
The trail is called The Grove. It officially opened to the public on March 18 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and it is located at McAllister Park off of Buckhorn Road, near the pump track. It is designed to accommodate riders from beginners to more experienced cyclists, and the course runs through a wooded section of the park and spans roughly the length of two football fields. It was designed by Action Sports Design, an international consulting firm that helps oversee the construction of skate parks, bike trails and more.
Two football fields is short by trail standards, and that is the point. As a "flow" trail, The Grove contains a series of hills and is named after the native Texas Persimmon, common in the San Antonio area, and riders will glide through a series of rollers and berms like a roller coaster, with minimal pedaling required. The neighborhood implication is that McAllister finally has a beginner surface a parent can ride with a nine-year-old without either of them getting hurt or bored. If your kid has outgrown the pump track, this is the next step, and it sits inside a park the family already knows.
The Grove is also not a one-off. Looking ahead, District 10 council member Marc Whyte said there are more biking projects on the way, and the flow trails at McAllister Park are just one of six bike projects that are going to be happening in San Antonio. The funding is real. The new track is part of the City of San Antonio's 2022-2027 Bond Program and McAllister Park Project, an approximately $2.03M initiative aimed at improving aspects of the park.
For context on scale: McAllister is not a pocket park. It is comprised of 976 acres on the north side of San Antonio between Jones Maltsberger and Wetmore Roads. The neighborhood has treated it as a running-and-walking park for years. This summer it is honestly a mountain biking park with running trails inside it.
The Northern Hills Golf Club is the other institution that gives the neighborhood its name and its shape. It sits at the southeast end and defines the sightlines of half the streets in the subdivision.
Longtime players will have noticed the course looks different this spring. In March, the Alamo City Golf Trail started renovations on cart paths and leveling tee boxes as part of ongoing investment in improvements across the Trail, and the project is expected to wrap up by early July 2026, with temporary tee boxes while out on the course.
That timing matters for two reasons. First, it means anyone who has been putting off a round because the course felt in-between should check tee sheets again by mid-July. Second, the clubhouse is unaffected. The clubhouse at Northern Hills showcases its history as a former private club, complete with charming event space and a welcoming 19th hole, and the venue is ideal for events of all sizes, accommodating anywhere from 20 to 250 guests. If you have a summer birthday, a graduation dinner, or a reunion on the calendar, the banquet side of the property has been open through the whole renovation.
The course itself is the one most residents forget the specifics of. This 18-hole, 6,627-yard golf course spans approximately 130 acres, offering a fun yet challenging experience for golfers of all skill levels, with excellent greens, a practice putting green, and a driving range. One of the signature holes, #12, presents a pond to the left of a narrow landing area, making club selection off the tee crucial. A 6,627-yard track inside a residential loop is unusual in San Antonio. Most courses at that length sit inside master-planned developments an exit or two away. This one sits at the end of your street.
The third clock is the one people miss most often, because the pool at 13114 Scarsdale looks like a city facility and behaves like a private one.
It is neither. Northern Hills Swimming Pool is a friendly and safe neighborhood pool located in the Northern Hills subdivision in NE San Antonio. It is owned and operated by the Northern Hills Neighborhood Swimming Pool Association, a 501(c)(3) non-profit community organization. It is open to all and welcomes all, and it is supported by generous donations, memberships, public admissions, and special event users.
The season is where the calendar surprise lives. The pool is traditionally open from the Memorial Day weekend, then every weekend thereafter until school is out for the summer, then through the start of NEISD Schools as well as the Labor Day weekend every year.
If you plan around meteorological summer, you will show up on a closed Tuesday in June. If you plan around the NEISD calendar, you will not.
That NEISD-anchored schedule is why the pool is more of a shoulder-season place than most residents realize. The last weeks of the school year and the first weeks of August are the two windows where the pool is open on weekends only, and those are the quietest, shadiest visits of the year.
The neighborhood's food strip is Nacogdoches Road. It is not restaurant row, and it is not trying to be. It is a working set of independent kitchens that residents already know by first name of the owner. The relevant question in the summer of 2026 is which ones fit which activity.
Those are the neighborhood-edge picks. If someone is willing to drive south to the corner of Bulverde and Thousand Oaks, Zombies Bar and Music Venue sits directly south of the neighborhood at the corner of Bulverde Road and Thousand Oaks, and it is the closest actual live-music room to any front door in Northern Hills.
Here is the sequence the three clocks reward.
Ride The Grove before 9 a.m. It faces east into the wooded section of McAllister, and the flow-trail berms feel very different in low sun than in overhead heat. Park at the Buckhorn Road lot near the multipurpose sports field. Bring more water than feels reasonable. Drive back through the neighborhood, drop the bike, and walk to the pool for the mid-morning shift before the afternoon crowd. Late lunch on Nacogdoches. Evening at the clubhouse for a drink on the covered side of the property while the temperatures come off.
That is a Northern Hills Saturday that only works this summer, because The Grove is new, the golf course renovation is on the verge of wrapping, and the pool is holding its weekend-only shoulder pattern. By next June, all three clocks will have moved again, and the sequence will change. That is the part of the neighborhood that does not show up on any list.
If you have been in Northern Hills long enough to have your own version of this summer rhythm, and you are starting to wonder what your home is worth in the market that has grown up around it, Kristi Waite can walk you through a hyperlocal, no-pressure valuation grounded in the same North San Antonio expertise reflected in this post. Get Your Free Home Valuation whenever the timing works for you.
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