With Cabot Citrus Farms and Cabot Highlands, though they already possessed great golf, you still saw opportunities to do some different things. What’s the impulse behind revamping the courses in Florida and adding the second course in Scotland?
Both are very different. Castle Stuart had its best year ever last year. It has a terrific clubhouse and is part of a rotation of golf in the Highlands. They had planned, over the years, to build accommodations and build more golf, and we were very aware of that. What we will end up with there will actually look a lot like what we have in Cape Breton today, with two golf courses by great architects, a par-3 course and lodging. We’re huge fans of it and just proud to be the stewards of it.
Citrus was different. What drew me to it was the natural beauty of the site and the [Florida] Nature Coast [an area in northeast Florida of nearly a million acres of forests, prairies and blackwater rivers], and the terrific elevation change at the property. There we are engaged in more of a renovation, trying to bring a product to market. The site has a track record of being recognized as one of the great sites for golf. There’s 600 acres that has never been developed, and the potential to build more golf.
Suddenly it seems like you’re just very busy, with two projects coming online this year, with a soft opening in Florida and a scheduled opening in St. Lucia. Construction on a second course in Scotland starts in April and your Cabot Revelstoke project outside of Vancouver is still being built. How do you manage all of that and expanding your team? What do you look for in new sites, given what you’ve already got in your portfolio?
The opportunities in Florida and Scotland were too good to be true to not do. In an ideal world, you might space those things by a year, but when you have great opportunities, you want to take advantage of them. Really, the answer to your question lies in surrounding yourself with great people and getting to do what you love with people you love, doing it with every day.
If we can work with Tom Doak in Scotland or Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in St. Lucia or Rod Whitman in Revelstoke, [British Columbia], [all golf course designers] — if we get to work with great people — we sort of focus on that, and that’s been a very important part of the formula to success for us.
Michael Croley
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