The Pipeline, july 12, 2013

     Grin and bare it: A municipality is Hebei Province plans to invest more than $500 million in a resort that will feature the largest clothing-optional beach in China. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly, and no, I’m not kidding. Luan County, 120 miles east of Beijing, has identified a 1,330-acre site for the to-be-named resort, which will also include a golf course and an equestrian center. If you’re wondering about the popularity of nude beaches in China, you should know that Luan County’s, presuming it’s actually built, will be the first on the mainland. Those who keep track of such attractions say that the nation’s only other one is outside Sanya, on Hainan Island, which has a few golf distractions as well.

     A new lodge opened this season at Roscommon, Michigan’s Forest Dunes Golf Club, and a second golf course may not be far behind. Lew Thompson, who bought the financially struggling property in 2011, is evidently pleased that real estate sales have picked up and is said to be thinking that another 18-hole track could create a Midwestern golf destination. Forest Dunes certainly has a solid foundation to build upon, as its existing Tom Weiskopf-designed course has been ranked among both the state’s and the nation’s top public layouts. Thompson, who made a small fortune in the trucking business, owns a Jack Nicklaus “signature” course in Montrose, Colorado, but for this commission he appears to be leaning toward an architect with minimalist sympathies. The names of Tom Doak, Coore & Crenshaw, and Mike DeVries have been floated.

     It’s taken nearly a decade, but Huffines Communities has begun laying plans to develop the ranch it bought from Meredith Cullen in 2004. The Dallas-based developer is trying to secure water for Cullen Ranch, which the Greenville Herald-Banner says will include 656 single-family houses, a retail/commercial area, a 350-acre lake, and “a 298-acre golf course.” If that number is accurate, Huffines could conceivably build more than 18 holes. The 2,000-acre property, a “one-time hunter’s paradise,” is just west of Quinlan, Texas, not far from Huffines’ Waterview golf community in Rowlett. Huffines also owns Riverside Golf Club, the centerpiece of its Viridian planned community in Grand Prairie.

     A multi-billionaire from Hong Kong is eyeing property in Queensland, Australia for an upscale resort that will cater primarily to Chinese tourists. Tony Fung, the face of one of Asia’s wealthiest families, has optioned 700 waterfront acres north of Cairns where he aims to build a casino, five hotels, vacation houses, what’s been called “the biggest aquarium in the southern hemisphere,” a golf course, and other attractions. The proposal “has the potential to completely reinvigorate the tourism industry in Cairns and Queensland,” a state official told the Sunday Mail. The venture is no sure thing, for Fung -- his full name is Tony Fung Wing Cheung -- must secure approvals from a parade of local and state agencies and pass inspection by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board. That being said, Fung has been investing in Queensland for well over a decade -- his holdings reportedly include a ranch and a sugar cane farm -- and he’s rich enough to have friends in high places. Working his corner on the venture in Carins is Rob Borbidge, the premier of Queensland in the mid 1990s.

     The operators of the Channel Tunnel have won a competition to build a golf community in Sangatte Bleriot-Plage, the French end of the undersea passageway. The centerpiece of the to-be-named, 400-acre community will be a tournament-worthy golf course designed by Kyle Phillips, one of golf architecture’s rising stars. Phillips, who apprenticed with Robert Trent Jones, Jr., has created two tracks ranked on Golf Digest’s list of the best courses outside the United States: Yas Links in Abu Dhabi (#24) and Kingsbarns Golf Links in St. Andrews, Scotland (#34). His latest endeavor may never reach such heights, but a consultant to the developers believes it’ll be “France’s first authentic links course.” Groupe Eurotunnel, the publicly traded firm that has a concession on the tunnel through 2086, hopes to break ground on it next year.

     Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the April 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. 

     A Scottish development group has floated a plan to build a daily-fee links on a farm just 10 miles south of the much-loved golf courses at St. Andrews. The forthcoming course, which will take shape on the Balcarres Estate in Colinsburgh, doesn’t yet have an official name, although the development group’s moniker -- Dumbarnie Links Golf LLP -- may offer a clue. The track will be designed by La Quinta, California-based Clive Clark, an Englishman who played professionally on the European Tour (he was a member of Europe’s Ryder Cup team in 1973) and later served as a golf analyst for the BBC. Clark has designed more than a dozen courses in Great Britain and the United States (in California, Maine, and New Hampshire). Malcolm Campbell, a golf writer and a principal of the LLP, believes that Clark’s track “has the potential to be a world-class addition to Scotland’s collection of classic links courses.”

     After a five-year wait, one of Canada’s best-known architects has finally started to build a links-style golf course within the city limits of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Tom McBroom’s 7,100-yard layout will be the centerpiece of Brunello Estates, a 560-acre community that’s been master-planned to include 3,200 housing units, office and retail space, a spa, a community center, and a variety of recreational attractions, among them an ice-skating rink. Despite Brunello’s density, the Toronto-based designer has described the site he’s been given as having “a sense of grandeur around it” and being “a picture-perfect setting for golf.” McBroom began planning the Links at Brunello in 2008. By then, five of his creations had been named by Golf Digest as Canada’s course of the year, among them the Links at Crowbush Cove on Prince Edward Island (1994), Bell Bay Golf Club in Nova Scotia (1998), and Ridge at Manitou Golf Club in Ontario (2006).

     The original version of the preceding post appeared in the May 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Thanks to lobbying by local residents, a land-use plan being created in Doniphan, Nebraska may allocate roughly 140 acres for an 18-hole golf course. As part of the effort, according to the Grand Island Independent, the members of a recently created golf course committee have met with “a course planner” in an effort to persuade city officials of the course’s viability.

     Painfully slowly, and perhaps unnecessarily, private golf clubs are making their way into Russia’s largest cities. The latest metropolis to take a spot in the pipeline is Leningrad, where United Development Group plans to build Burnaya Golf Park. The golf course will anchor a 225-acre spread that’s expected to include about three dozen houses, a hotel, a wildlife park, and, in a nod to the mother country, what a Russian newspaper calls “a military-patriotic park.” United, which keeps a low profile, hopes to feel the Burnaya in 2016.