South Street Partners, one of the largest owners and operators of private residential club and resort communities in the United States – including Kiawah Island, Palmetto Bluff, The Cliffs, Naples Grande, Barnsley Resort, Elevation Hotel & Spa, The King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort and Residences at Salamander – is planing a new 18-hole course designed by the legendary team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
Located on approximately 500 acres at Palmetto Bluff in Bluffton, S.C., and estimated to open Winter 2025 – 2026 – the yet unnamed course’s first phase of construction will include the golf course, a maintenance facility and temporary amenities with a clubhouse planned for a second phase. The announcement of this new course follows the opening earlier this year of “Crossroads,” Palmetto Bluff’s new reversible nine-hole course from the golf architecture firm, King-Collins Golf Course Design.
Since assuming ownership of Palmetto Bluff – located halfway between Savannah and Charlesto – in 2021, South Street has worked closely with the Palmetto Bluff Conservancy, a non-profit organization founded in 2003 to protect the land and wetlands throughout the community. Guided by its founding principle of “Designing with Nature,” an approach to development that prioritizes conservation to safeguard natural habitats – while enhancing stakeholder value – South Street acts to ensure a balance of environmental beauty with human activity. Coore & Crenshaw – renowned for designs imbued with a deep sense of place showcasing regional elements – was the natural choice for the conservation-minded firm’s new course. The duo was also already familiar with Palmetto Bluff, having walked the exact Lowcountry acreage decades before when a previous owner had considered building a golf course that never come to fruition.
“Nearly 17 years ago our design company was scheduled to build a course at Palmetto Bluff. That course never became a reality; but now South Street Partners, owners of Palmetto Bluff, have given us a second chance to join one of America’s most admired communities. We are excited about the potential of the site we’ve been given and the opportunity to create a course that hopefully can become a complement to the long history of golf in the Carolina community,” Bill Coore said.
“We are honored to be starting the new course at Palmetto Bluff. We have a beautiful piece of land to work with and have been looking forward to doing something there for many years. It’s a special place,” said Ben Crenshaw.
Located on Palmetto Bluff’s East end – and anchoring what will eventually be the community’s third village, Anson – the new course will embrace a different approach to golf. Unlike most Lowcountry courses that are laid out with residential real estate in mind, South Street requested the Coore & Crenshaw team make its decisions without a land planning model dictating where the course needed to go. No residential component enabled the team to design a pure golf landscape for a pure golfing experience.
Due to the lack of homes on the course, Anson Village will have a powerful sense of arrival, and this sublime trip will continue as golfers follow the game through the course’s four different forest types (upland pine/maritime/live oaks/salt palmettos and sabal palmettos) into wide-open spaces with dramatic coastal vistas and several holes bordering the picturesque bluffs with expansive marsh views on the New River. Each hole will have a variety of tee boxes providing multiple levels of challenge, distance, and site lines. The land between the holes will be managed areas of native flora and fauna composed of sparkleberry, silky aster, fox tail, goldenrod, and wiry broom sedge.
Like the Coore & Crenshaw restoration of Pinehurst No. 2, grass lines will transition directly into the native edges which will be a blend of dense woodland, open quail woods, sandy brush, freshwater wetlands and saltwater marsh. There are currently 3.5 acres of putting surface, including 1 practice green and 1 chipping green, planned.
“Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have designed some of the most extraordinary golf courses around the world, so they were the obvious first choice for our new course at Palmetto Bluff” said Chris Randolph, Partner, South Street Partners. “Our vision was perfectly aligned from the start – to create a masterpiece that would not only be exciting to play but would also fit within its setting as though it could have been built a hundred years ago.”
South Street’s approach dovetails with Coore & Crenshaw’s belief in laying a course naturally so that it looks comfortable, like it belongs there as well as with the Conservancy’s mission. The Conservancy will continue to manage the land around the course, and native areas within the course, with maintenance such as prescribed burns, and out of the several hundred acres set aside for the course, only about 80 have been cleared for playing surface, so much of the allotted land will remain as is. This also aligns with Coore’s famous process – most of his design happens during the construction – as he gets to know the land: the golf course was already here; it is just revealing itself to him.
Palmetto Bluff is largest remaining entitled waterfront property on the East Coast – a 20,000-acre community defined by 32 miles of coastline along three rivers – the May, Cooper, and New. Guided by the Palmetto Bluff Conservancy, protecting the land has been integral to Palmetto Bluff’s modern-day development, and its riverfront, Inland Waterway, and extensive nature trails are enriched by wilderness and wildlife. The community features two village centers, Wilson and Moreland; the private Palmetto Bluff Club that offers exclusive access to a range of best-in-class amenities, including the newly renovated Shooting Club, the expansive Wilson Lawn & Racquet Club, a 12-acre working farm, the full-service Wilson Landing Marina, a 9-hole King-Collins reversible course, and an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course.