Going Green
Irish vacation communities step up to the tee.
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ShareFebruary 1, 2008
Until recently, Ireland was a forlorn island washed by rain and curtained by mist—a place its scant inhabitants could not wait to flee. As George Bernard Shaw unapologetically put it, "I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could."Prosperity has changed all that. Ireland’s booming economy has
created a young, successful generation full of pent-up land lust. Unlike Shaw’s
peers, however, many Irish do not wish to stray far from their motherland—even
when purchasing a holiday home. And so much the better if that home is on
storied land that once belonged to dukes and earls. It also helps to offer great
golf, rivers for fly fishing, trails for horseback riding, a spa for
regenerating the spirit and a setting that looks like the kind of place where
Elizabeth Taylor in National
Velvet might be the girl next door.
This quiet, gentler Ireland exists 40 minutes west of Dublin,
where the River Liffey tapers to a pastoral stream that wends through 550 acres
of gardens, ponds and cypress and copper beech trees. For centuries, dating back
to French Norman times, the estate was home to a series of aristocrats and
gentry. Today, the property—branded as the Kildare Hotel and Country Club but
more commonly known as the K Club—has become the stomping grounds of Ireland’s
new young lions, multimillionaires and corporate executives, offering two
championship golf courses, an art-filled hotel and some 250 private residences.
Most of the property owners at the K Club do not opt into a
rental pool, but one is in place for those wishing to do so. Discussions are
under way to add a second wing with 67 guest rooms to the club’s chateau-style
Straffan House, which was built in 1831 and forms the basis of the 69-room
hotel. If the plan is approved by the club’s board of directors, the new wing
will include one- to three-bedroom suites overlooking the river and the 17th
fairway of the Palmer Ryder Cup course. In addition to receiving a golf club
membership valued at more than $100,000, owners will have access to their suites
for 14 nights in the summer and 14 nights in the winter. The program in its
current status would require owners to lease their rooms back to the hotel the
rest of the time. In return, owners will receive 80 percent of the profits from
their room’s sales.
The success of the K Club, which hosted the Ryder Cup in 2006,
has inspired others to develop similar communities. In 1991, only a few luxury
hotels existed in Ireland. Today there are 28, many of them situated on golf
courses that offer residential options. Most of the newer communities are
located on former estates with manor homes that recall the lifestyles of the
landed gentry who lived amid exquisite collections of art and antiques and
enjoyed outdoor pursuits such as fishing and riding. Mount Juliet in Kilkenny
and Adare Manor in Limerick, for instance, follow a country estate model with
private residences designed to carry out the theme. Waterford Castle Hotel &
Golf Club—which is surrounded by woodlands on a private 310-acre island on the
River Suir, near the walled city of Waterford—will follow suit after the
completion of its golf course redesign this year. Future enhancements include
the addition of a spa, an equestrian center, a marina and 48 luxury homes.
Though built in the grand-estate style, the Heritage Golf and
Spa Resort does not have a pedigreed past. In 2000, Irish developer David Keane
transformed farmland into a golf community with a hotel, bowling green and
several man-made lakes. The 320-acre property is close to an old village, and
locals are often invited to enjoy the resort’s facilities, including the club,
restaurants and pub.
"The newly prosperous Irish happen to like the same things we
like," says American Charles P. Darby, who developed the 10,000-acre Kiawah
Island Golf Resort near Charleston, South Carolina, and in 1999 bought what was
perhaps Ireland’s last great piece of links land. Smitten by the property’s 1.5
miles of crescent-shaped beach and its 90-foot dunes covered in grass, Darby
took a chance and purchased the 337 acres from farmers before applying for
permission to build on it. "There is no land like this left in America," he
says. "And very few like it left in the world."
Opened in 2006 as the Lodge at Doonbeg Golf Club, the resort offers
private investment golf memberships, in which members buy a residence and have
the option of offering it back into the rental pool. Despite the dwindling
exchange rate for the dollar, about half of Doonbeg’s 480 owner-members are from
the United States. Most of Ireland’s golf communities, in fact, have Americans
among their membership. "They come several times a year," says Darby. "Sometimes
they are fathers and sons; sometimes they are several generations of families.
But it’s almost always those seeking to play a genuine links course and have the
Irish experience."
