Move into one of Bexley's wooded sections in North Chesterfield and it doesn't take long to notice the lake through the trees. It's easy to picture a summer built around it: towels on the bank, kids cannonballing off a dock, maybe a floating game of Marco Polo. Then you read the covenants and find out the lake was never built for any of that. Canoes are capped at 18 feet. Motors have to be electric, and even those can't exceed 18 volts. Gas engines aren't allowed at all. Nobody swims in it.
That one rule tells you more about how Bexley actually works than any listing description does. The lake isn't a recreation center. It's infrastructure, quietly shared across four separate homeowner sections that all answer to the same name, and understanding that changes where a Bexley resident actually goes to cool off in July.
A Lake With Rules, Not a Beach
Upper Lake Bexley covers about 20 acres and sits at the center of the neighborhood's common land, which the Bexley Association's own materials describe in two different ways: 44 acres in one place on the association's website, and more than 52 acres in a separate homeowner information packet that includes the entrances, the lakes, and the park. Whichever figure is right, the shared land does the same job either way: it holds the entrances, the lake, and a park at the intersection of Broadstone Road and Walhala Drive.
What residents can actually do there is spelled out in the bylaws, and it reads more like a marina rulebook than a neighborhood amenity list:
- Canoes may not exceed 18 feet, and other watercraft face a tighter length limit
- No gasoline or internal combustion engines are permitted on the lake under any circumstance
- Electric motors are allowed, but only up to 18 volts
- Guests may only use the lake when accompanied by a member of the association
- No permanent piers, docks, or fixed structures may be built into the water
Households are split into two membership classes for lake purposes: Lakefront Residents, who own property touching the water and can launch directly from their own yard, and Off-Lake Residents, who get access through the common areas instead. Both pay dues on the same schedule and get one vote per household regardless of which class they're in. Canoes get stored on racks around the park rather than dragged home after every trip, and residents register for a rack slot through the association rather than just leaving a boat wherever.
None of this reads like an oversight. A lake with an 18-volt motor cap and no swimming isn't trying to be a water park. It's trying to stay quiet, and decades into the neighborhood's life it still is.
One Name, Four Boards
Here's the part that trips people up. "Bexley" isn't one homeowners association. It's the Bexley Association, which is itself made up of Bexley Cosmopolitan, Bexley East and Meadows, and the original Bexley section, each with its own covenants layered under one shared board. Dues, architectural review, and lake access all run through that combined association, but a resale certificate for a Bexley Cosmopolitan home and one for original Bexley aren't pulling from an identical rulebook.
Then there's Bexley West, a separate community altogether, not part of the Bexley Association, but close enough that the two share a piece of ground. Bexley West's own site puts it plainly:
"We share ownership (with Bexley) in a playground, located at the lake."
So the swings and slide at the water's edge belong to two HOAs at once, neither of which is legally the other's parent organization. It's a small detail, but it explains a pattern that shows up again and again in how this pocket of Chesterfield handles amenities: nobody builds their own full set. Everybody borrows a piece from next door.
So Where Does Everyone Actually Swim
This is where the borrowing gets useful. Bexley West doesn't have its own pool either, so it arranged something with Loch Braemar, a nearby swim club, that lets Bexley West residents join at the same rate Loch Braemar charges its own homeowners, a discount of more than 20 percent off the standard outside rate. A family membership runs $340 for the season, a couple or adult-plus-one-child membership is $260, a small family of two adults and one child under 10 is $300, and an individual membership is $230. The pool opens Memorial Day weekend, runs daily through Labor Day, then stays open for the first few weekends of September before closing for good.
That arrangement is specific to Bexley West. For residents in the four sections under the Bexley Association proper, the association's own materials don't list an equivalent pool deal, which is exactly why threads on neighborhood apps regularly show people asking where a Bexley-area family can pay to swim for the summer. A few real options sit within a short drive:
| Option | Type | Season | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loch Braemar Pool | Neighborhood swim club | Memorial Day–Labor Day, plus early September weekends | Discounted membership tied to Bexley West; open to guests with sponsorship |
| Bon Air Community Association | Three-pool club with swim and dive teams | Memorial Day–Labor Day | Main pool is an 8-lane, 25-yard competition pool with a 13.5-foot diving well and two 1-meter boards; membership open to the public, subject to availability |
| Bon Air Country Club | Private club pool | Memorial Day–Labor Day | Membership-based, currently accepting applications |
| Chesterfield Athletic Club | Fitness club with indoor and outdoor pools | Year-round | Heated indoor pool means swimming doesn't stop when the outdoor season ends |
None of these are Bexley amenities in the strict sense. They're the informal network that fills the gap the lake covenants leave open, and knowing which door to knock on saves a family from spending June searching for something that doesn't exist inside the neighborhood boundary.
What Holds It Together
The lake's job was never recreation in the pool sense. It's the reason the streets stay quiet and the tree canopy stays intact, and the rest of Bexley's social calendar fills in around that constraint rather than fighting it. The association runs an annual homeowners meeting every February, a neighborhood-wide yard sale, a Neighborhood Watch program, and an annual picnic that gives all four sections a reason to show up in the same place at the same time. Board meetings happen monthly from September through May, run entirely by volunteers who also happen to be your neighbors.
None of that requires a pool. It requires people who know the rack numbers for their canoes, know which weekend the yard sale falls on, and know that the fastest way to get a straight answer about the lake is to email the association rather than guess. That's a different kind of amenity than a diving board, but it's the one that's actually built the neighborhood's character over the years, one covenant meeting and one shared playground at a time.
If you're already living here and none of this was on the closing disclosure, that's normal. Most of it lives in board minutes and bylaws packets, not marketing copy. If you ever do want someone who reads that fine print for a living, whether it's for a Bexley home or one of the other Central Virginia neighborhoods with their own quiet quirks, Heather Grubb is a phone call away. Let's Connect.
