Coul Links Project To Get Another Shot Before Planners?

Ewan Murray files a lengthy Guardian piece on an effort to revive the Coul Links project near Dornoch, Scotland. While on a property with some sensitive lands, the proposed Coore and Crenshaw course likely failed as a result of Scotland’s experiences with another American developer.

Murray writes:

With American investors key to the project, comparisons were not unreasonably – if unhelpfully to those pursuing a golf course – drawn with Donald Trump’s controversial development in Aberdeenshire. One glance across social media illustrates the depth of feeling attached to Coul and acrimony as attached. One golfer’s paradise is someone else’s idea of vandalism on sacred land.

Unbowed, a group of individuals want to bring Coul Links back before the planners. Edward Abel Smith, a London-based landowner, is working in conjunction with the newly formed Communities for Coul. He now wants to build an eco-friendly hotel and will, should planning be granted, hand over his territory for 18 holes at a long-term peppercorn rent. The multimillion dollar question, though, is why this scheme will succeed now when the previous one in early 2020 so publicly failed?

“I wouldn’t say we are confident but we feel strongly about the overall benefits that the development would bring,” says Communities for Coul’s Gordon Sutherland. “We want this golf course as a catalyst for economic development. The number of jobs forecast are calculated by businesses prepared to invest; there is almost £50m of private investment lined up and 180 jobs, 108 of which would be full-time.

The project had passed some early stages of planning. It’s not clear if Todd Warnock or Mike Keiser are involved with the new group. Warnock is the visionairy behind the extraordinary Dornoch House.