BY TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE

There is the little side room where the ladies play canasta on Wednesday. There's the polished wood bar where the men sip rum and talk politics, not far from the outside patio where they smoke cigars and play dominoes.

But there is more to the venerable Big Five Club in West Miami-Dade than simple nostalgia for a Cuba many members have never seen, says newly elected president Jorge Piedra.

''We constantly need to attract younger families in order to keep the momentum going, to keep the tradition alive,'' said Piedra, 37, whose parents are also members and who now brings his own children to play ball and celebrate birthdays at the club.

The past five years have brought an onslaught of renovations intended to not only spruce up the facilities for current members, but attract new ones as well.

There's a new children's park, a resurrected arboleda, a shady grove of trees where families can barbecue (the original was damaged by Hurricane Wilma), and new gym and locker facilities.

CLUB MAKEOVER

The club offices, once located in a trailer, have moved into the redesigned clubhouse, which is now fronted by a graceful porte-cochere.

Still to be completed: A modernized conference room that will have Internet access and screens able to project PowerPoint presentations, and a teen room with arcade games and ping pong.

''It's almost a complete facelift,'' said Piedra, walking through the ceramic-tiled front lobby toward the club's dining room, where a cluster of women dressed in pantsuits and pearls were celebrating a birthday lunch.

Piedra, an attorney, is the newest president of the club founded more than four decades ago by a group of Cubans looking to keep traditions alive in exile.

The idea, while seemingly innocuous now, was at the time somewhat controversial, said Fernando Martinez, a past president and the unofficial historian of the club.

''Some people were critical, saying [the founders] were giving up on going back to Cuba,'' said Martinez, who also frequented the club as a child and now owns a food distribution company. ``But the club has always tried to stay away from politics. It was established to preserve the Cuban family, and Cuban traditions.''

Over the years, the club has played host to countless birthday parties and wedding banquets -- and was a favorite haunt of some of the more notable members of the Cuban community.

Marilyn Milian, the former state prosecutor and host of The People's Court, took swimming classes there. Andy Garcia, whose father was a board member from 1972 to 1981, used to sing at weekly amateur nights and worked as a summer camp counselor as a teen.

A head shot of the Ocean's 11 actor hangs on the club's wall of fame, near a picture of Florida Supreme Court Justice Raul Cantero, another Big Five alum.

The club even warranted mention by writer Joan Didion in her 1987 novel, Miami, as a sign of an exile population that embraced a high-society politesse of debutante balls and charity lunches, but remained largely isolated from -- and often ignored by -- their non-Hispanic counterparts.

Writing of an ''upcoming event at the Big Five Club, a Miami club founded by former members of five fashionable clubs in pre-revolutionary Havana: a coctel, or cocktail party, at which tables would be assigned for yet another gala,'' Didion notes that ``neither the photographs of the Cuban quinceañeras nor the notes about the coctel at the Big Five were apt to appear in the newspapers read by Miami anglos.''

Which, for the most part, was fine with the original guard of the Big Five, who saw in their club a chance to rebuild a network of old friends and forge new contacts in exile.

''In those times they weren't as welcome in country club type places,'' said Piedra, recalling the Miami of the 1960s.

``And even if they could get in, they had language barriers. This was a place they could feel at home with each other.''

Former members of five of Havana's yacht and golf clubs bought the tract of land in 1967, in what was then a farflung stretch of scrubland in unincorporated Dade off Southwest Eighth Street and 92nd Avenue.

But its early incarnation looked nothing like the elegant social clubs of old Havana. The original structure was little more than a modest house, the grounds offering few activities save for the occasional family picnic.

That changed, of course. As the Big Five members pooled their resources, and new members of a rapidly increasing Cuban population arrived in Miami, the club swelled both in membership and prestige. By 1971, the club had cobbled together more parcels of land to create a 21-acre campus.

Ballrooms were built, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool and baseball field added -- as was a well-appointed bar, dining room, squash and tennis courts.

At its peak, the initiation fee for a new family was $5,000, with a waiting list in the double-digits.

Cristina Moreno, whose father, Manuel R. Morales Gomez, was the founding president of the club, said the allure of the place -- where she played volleyball and taught swimming as a teenager -- is timeless.

''All of us who grew up there have a shared history,'' said Moreno, now an attorney and wife of U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno.

``It's always been a place where the whole family could come, and there was something for everyone to do.''

But the club has had, as Moreno puts it, ``its ups and downs.''

The worst came after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, when the grounds were severely damaged and membership declined.

The board of directors opted to sell seven acres in 1996 for about $1.4 million to pay down the debt and keep finances afloat.

''The hurricane really dealt the club a blow. It was out of commission for a while, people found other places to go,'' said Moreno, who was on the board at the time.

``The membership just wasn't coming and we made the difficult decision to sell off the piece of property.''

The plan ''succeeded admirably,'' she said, although it took several years for the club to rebound.

At its lowest point, the club numbered about 700 families -- less than half of the 1,500 who were members in the year before Andrew hit.

BOUNCING BACK

There are now 830 families registered, with a steady uptick over the past three years, said Martinez.

The once moribund party salons, which a decade ago were struggling to make do with a handful of quinces parties a year, are now bustling nearly every weekend with weddings -- and, yes, quinceañeras, which are enjoying a renaissance of sorts at the Big Five, mirroring a larger national trend.

The price of admission has also dropped: $500 for new members -- and a discount for families with a head of household under 40.

The monthly fee for those relatively young members is $58 per household, compared to the regular rate of $97.

In the early days, membership was contingent on a connection to the five Havana clubs -- the Havana and Miramar yacht clubs, Vedado Tennis Club, Casino Español, Biltmore Yacht and Country Club and the Havana and Miramar yacht clubs.

Those restrictions eased as time passed, although prospective members still have to be sponsored by two current members, undergo an interview with a screening committee, and pass a final vote by the board of directors.

And while the club was founded on nostalgia for the old days of Cuba, the whites-only policies of those original social clubs, common in the 1950s, is no longer intact.

CUBAN MAJORITY

The Big Five's official rules forbid discrimination based on race, creed or gender, although the broad majority of the club is either Cuban-born or the children of Cuban exiles, said Piedra.

Some things, of course, remain unchanged: The club's capital improvement plan also includes a new room for ladies to play canasta.

And there is, of course, a discount for senior citizens as well -- a testament to a club that is trying to woo new blood while still honoring its ranks of older members.

''I walk through here and it's full of so many memories. And there will always be a place for tradition here,'' Piedra said.

``But there's a future for us here, too.''