Welcome to the Chattooga Club, the American capital of world-class croquet-Cashiers, NC
Croquet, Anyone? 02/01/2006
[Real Estate]
Lawn games rule at the Chattooga Club in North Carolina.
text by:Bill Whitman
Just off Route 107, a rural highway near Cashiers, N.C., a side road spirals up toward two flawlessly groomed lawns where people crouch intently over brightly colored balls. Welcome to the Chattooga Club, the American capital of world-class croquet. Enthusiasts arrive at this gated community from across the United States and Europe to don their whites and compete on Chattooga’s lawns, which many experts consider the best in the world.
Aside from big-league croquet and an idyllic setting, this gated community offers its 200 members, their families and a handful of guests a world of relaxed elegance. “We wanted Chattooga to be a mountain retreat in the Blue Ridge where families could come together to build lifelong memories,” says Charleston businessman John Rivers, who founded Chattooga in 1988. Those memories will surely include Chattooga’s full menu of activities, which include tennis, hiking and annual concerts by the Charleston Symphony. The club also offers a state-of-the-art spa and fitness facility and four new three-bedroom, three-bath spa cottages priced around $1 million.
Chattooga’s spacious public rooms and guest suites remind visitors of a classic English country house that has somehow materialized in western North Carolina: stone fireplaces, Audubon prints, antiques and colorful kilims on gleaming hardwood floors. The dining room has the look and feel of a 1910 hunting lodge. Think Lady Astor meets Teddy Roosevelt. Members can also dine in the spacious open-air pavilion, where they look out to the crests of the Blue Ridge.
Chattooga is home to 70 families who enjoy custom-designed homes of bark and stone that blend seamlessly into the hillsides and woodlands. Their residences, most with cathedral-ceiling great rooms, range in price from about $1 million for a 1,800-square-foot cottage to around $7 million for a 10,000-square-foot mansion. Lots range in size from one to six acres and are priced between $600,000 and $3 million.
The pleasures of living at Chattooga expanded last November when the club opened the Sanctuary, a separate 37-acre gated enclave that Rivers calls “a special part of our club, with some of the most beautiful land anywhere.” The Sanctuary’s nine lots, one of which comes with a 40-foot waterfall, vary in size from two-and-a-half to five-and-a-half acres and are being offered at prices starting at $1.2 million.
FACTS & STATS
Croquet season at Chattooga runs from May through October and includes two major tournaments, the mid-June Mount Laurel Invitational and the Autumn Leaves Invitational in October.
Membership in the Chattooga Club is by invitation only. Prospective members should contact the membership committee at Chattooga Club, P.O. Box 1886, Cashiers, NC 28717.
For more information regarding Real Estate, and Lots for sale mailto:info@carolinapg.com or call
888-277-2006
