Since the Cloudland hotel opened on Leap Day at the master-planned community McLemore on Lookout Mountain, developer Duane Horton said he’s looking forward to the opening of the Keep golf course late this summer.
The 17th hole is being sodded now with zoysia grass, all the way up to bare rock, he told the Rotary Club Thursday. Skyside, a cantilevered restaurant and bar, is also near completion.
Course co-designer Rees Jones has said the Keep “could host a major.” Mr. Horton said every hole has brow views, and one lookout spot offers a view of all 18 holes.
“It’s going to be such a complement to what we have,” Mr. Horton said. Bill Bergin and Mr. Jones also designed McLemore’s Highlands course, which opened in 2019.
Hardly any earth had to be moved in the Keep’s construction, he said. “It lays on the ground so well.” One designer said the 200-acre landscape revealed 18 holes to him.
“Here, he just had to find them,” Mr. Horton said. “This is going to be something very special,” he said.
From the ninth hole, his favorite, he can see the elementary school he attended in the valley. Mr. Horton reminisced about his first glimpse of the McLemore property in 2007.
When it’s all said and done, Mr. Horton said, the project will have acquired $1 billion in total investments.
“The sky really is the limit,” he said. In the next five years, he said, he will acquire permits to build employee housing, churches, schools, medical clinics, and a grocery store for the master-planned community.
“It really is a food desert,” he said.
He told the group that the resort began with $72 million in private equity investment, $21 million of which came from the Chattanooga area.
Its location serves as a base to explore Crockford-Pigeon Mountain Wildlife Management Area, Cloudland Canyon State Park, DeSoto State Park, Little River Canyon National Preserve, Point Park, the Incline, Rock City, Ruby Falls, hang gliding, caving and biking.
“McLemore is right in the middle of all that,” Mr. Horton said. “There’s just so much to offer on Lookout Mountain.”
The Highlands course has received accolades “beyond our expectations,” Mr. Horton told the group. The course’s global top-10 finishing hole, placed over the brow “wasn’t even originally part of the plan,” he said.
The designers thought they were short on space and explored a lower ledge on a whim.
“He came up a couple of hours later, sweaty, bloody... and a big grin on his face,” Mr. Horton said.
The resort is named after a Scottish immigrant who became a Cherokee chief and a U.S. military captain.
“He really served both cultures,” Mr. Horton said.
The Cloudland hotel is part of Hilton’s Curio Collection, which includes properties in Ibiza, Nairobi and Crete. Hilton has said the property is the next Grove Park Inn, Mr. Horton said.
There are 100 homes built in McLemore with room for 250 more, he said, and plans for even more beyond that.
Open house with tours will be May 9 from 3-6 p.m.