Category Archives: About kiawahisland

2016: Awards and anniversaries

This March, the editors of Barron’s PENTA magazine ranked Kiawah Island #5 on their annual list of “Top Resort Communities” – a list that Kiawah has been on since the magazine first began such a ranking. Kiawah Island is no stranger to “Best” lists, and with 2016 marking the 40th anniversary of the first real estate sales in the Kiawah Island community (Sparrow Pond debuted in the spring of 1976) – we wanted to look back at two key Kiawah Island honors that are also “celebrating” anniversaries.

With golf’s first major in the record books, the 2016 golf season is upon us, and will culminate in September’s Ryder Cup matches. 2016 is the 25th anniversary of the event that brought Kiawah Island to the international stage, and brought the Ryder Cup back to prominence in the golf world.

While the Ryder Cup has been a highly anticipated event every other year for the past two decades, it was neither highly anticipated nor highly viewed before the 1991 event at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s Ocean Course. “The Ryder Cup had been on USA Cable with a taped version on ABC – it never was a big event,” stated Jon Miller, who in 1991 was president of sports programming for NBC. “We made a deal with the PGA of America for the Ryder Cup. We wanted to create a Masters feel. The plan was to show three hours a day on Saturday and Sunday.”

Miller continued, “We get to Kiawah.The first day’s matches were exciting. Seve and Azinger get into it. Then there was fog on Saturday morning. When we come on the air at 3, the afternoon matches just started. By the time we got to 6 (when the broadcast was scheduled to end), we knew we had an hour to 90 minutes left, and we decided we’d stay on the air. Since we ran all of our commercials, we ran last 90 minutes commercial-free. It was amazing television. On Sunday, it came down to the last putt (Bernhard Langer missed to give the U.S. the victory). The next thing you know, Kiawah became ‘The War by the Shore.’ The Ryder Cup went to another level.” The event – and the Island – would never be the same.

Five years later in 1996, Kiawah Island was one of the first destination communities to win the Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the development industry’s leading organization. From their website, ULI.org:

ULI began the Awards for Excellence program in 1979 with the objective of recognizing truly superior development efforts. The criteria for the awards include factors that go beyond good design, including leadership, contribution to the community, innovations, public/private partnership, environmental protection and enhancement, response to societal needs, and financial success. Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the development industry.

Ocean Park’s Marsh House to open Memorial weekend

On the lush eastern tip of Kiawah Island, the Ocean Park neighborhood already seems to have it all. Filled with parkland, bike trails, and ancient oaks, Ocean Park borders marshes, an internationally renowned golf course, and a nature preserve.

To help enhance the new neighborhood into a true community, a centerpiece was needed: an indoor/outdoor gathering place for neighbors to meet and enjoy conversation, food, and drink while overlooking Kiawah’s vast southeastern marsh. From that vision comes a new amenity: the Marsh House, which opens Memorial weekend 2016.

Featuring an infinity pool, grill, and bar, the new Marsh House will offer a diversity of indoor, outdoor, covered, and uncovered spots for eating, drinking, and relaxing: beside a fireplace, atop a raised deck, by a bar overlooking the marsh.

While the rolling parklands and trails of Ocean Park are open to all Kiawah residents, the Marsh House will exclusively serve both Kiawah Island Club Members and property owners of Ocean Park – with owners in Marsh Walk, a collection of new residences adjacent to the Marsh House, having the most convenient access to this great new facility.

An Ideal Villa Makeover

“We are 251 steps to the beach,” Donna Porritt says as I step into her Mariner’s Watch villa, “but who’s counting?”

At 625 square feet, there is a lot about the villa that could rely on numbers. Whether you attribute the tiny house movement or reducing your carbon footprint, the art of downsizing—living full time in a significantly small space without sacrificing the luxuries and belongings that matter to you most—is fun, and Donna and husband Sam Bromage perfected it by having “right-sized” living in mind from the start of their renovation until the day they brought the last of their belongings from Connecticut.