By Scott Kauffman:
For as long as Ben Cowan-Dewar can remember, the Canadian golf developer has been drawn to distinctive course design and compelling golf destinations that will survive the test of time.
Cowan-Dewar’s fascination with golf architecture and development started as a young child, when he would lay out holes and build components of a course on his family’s farm in eastern Ontario. Then, as a young adult in 1999, the University of Toronto graduate parlayed his passion for golf excellence into a successful executive-level travel business called GolfTI (Golf Travel Impressarios).
Twenty years later, Cowan-Dewar has taken this lifelong love for golf and not only created a growing network of global courses, but the developer’s thoughtfully curated Cabot-branded properties have arguably made Cowan-Dewar the hottest new pied piper of must-play, must-buy resort-style golf properties.
Five months ago, the Toronto-based golf developer/operator got golf aficionados excited after acquiring World Woods Golf Club in Florida and announcing the critically acclaimed 36-hole facility will be completely redesigned and redeveloped as Cabot Citrus Farms. Situated in Brooksville about 50 miles north of Tampa and 80 miles west of Orlando, World Woods was established by Yukihisa Inoue in 1993 with two Tom Fazio-designed layouts.
In its early years, the Fazio-designed Pine Barrens and Rolling Oaks layouts, not to mention an extensive practice facility, were perennially ranked among Florida’s best facilities. But World Woods lost much of its golf allure in recent years.
Nevertheless, Cowan-Dewar sees tremendous potential with the 1,200-acre picturesque Florida property that features centuries-old mossy oaks, canopies of towering sand pines and rare rolling hills with 85 feet of elevation changes in some places. And Cowan-Dewar seems confident he can make Brooksville another great new golf destination with the same formula he perfected at Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada, and other developments in the works in British Columbia, Canada, and St. Lucia.
“I couldn’t wish for a better location for our first U.S. development,” Cowan-Dewar says. “The property is a nature lover’s paradise that rivals the most spectacular sites I’ve seen across the world. We are excited to build upon the amazing legacy established at World Woods and forge a new path for Cabot Citrus Farms as a vibrant golf and residential community that showcases the Sunshine State’s abundant natural offerings.”
According to the Cabot organization, the newly developed Cabot Citrus Farms is scheduled to open in 2023 with two revitalized 18-hole courses, two new short courses and a reimagined clubhouse. Cabot also plans to redesign and enhance the existing practice facilities with a new putting course and driving range.
Kyle Franz is redoing the Pine Barrens layout, and the architectural team of Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns was hired for the Rolling Oaks assignment. Mike Nuzzo will oversee the task infusing new life and purpose into the practice area, including the two new nine-hole layouts.
Cabot Citrus Farms is yet another example of the golf industry’s ongoing pivot towards building more purposeful golf-centric destinations. To be sure, Cowan-Dewar says the key to creating any great new sustainable destination starts with the land, first and foremost.
“I’ve never seen a great golf course on a terrible site,” Cowan-Dewar adds. “If you’re going to build something great, you’ve got to have a great site, and you’ve got to give golf really the top billing on the land. And I think what that does - at its best – is golf creates soul-stirring experiences.”
Of course, Cowan-Dewar created his first soul-stirring experience in 2011 and put Cape Breton, Nova Scotia on the golf map in the process after opening Cabot Links with the financial backing of Mike Keiser, another thoughtful golfer-turned developer who certainly knows a thing or two about creating extraordinary golf destinations in far-flung places.
Four years later, after Cowan-Dewar and Keiser partnered again on nearby Cabot Cliffs, a stunning oceanfront layout designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the resort-style development shot to the top of course rankings and Cabot became a household name.
For Cowan-Dewar, his pair of Inverness, Cape Breton golf beauties that now features resort accommodations and low-density residential real estate, was something born out of a site visit he made to the area 17 years ago and inspiration stored from his travel business days of taking high-end golf clients to historic links layouts such as Dornoch and the other Inverness, for example, in Scotland.
And he’ll never forget his first glimpse of that mile of ocean frontage along Cape Breton’s dramatic craggy coastline or the four miles of sandy beach he later assembled.
“Great golf and great real estate is usually so site specific,” Cowan-Dewar notes. “When I was here in 2004 to think of building a links course with a town on the inside; a fish harbor on the southern boundary. … It was just amazing.
“And from what I got to see in the golf travel business and playing most of the world’s great courses, it really and truly was an amazing site. And that’s what spoke to me most of all. I think that it was sort of love at first sight on the site.”
In many respects, it’s a feeling that still reverberates inside the many golfers now playing these Cabot courses. And you can bet they’ll have the same “soul-stirring” experience once Cabot Citrus Farms reopens and the new Coore-Crenshaw course officially opens next year in St. Lucia.