Candyroot Lodge is golf's most unique new destination with the first solo course built by this up-and-coming architect
The origins for America’s next great public golf destination can be traced back to Mike Koprowski’s decision on a Halloween afternoon in 2024 to pull his car over. He had been driving back to his home in Pinehurst from Broomsedge, his first-ever original course with Kyle Franz, and had seen a timber company list a 300-acre parcel of land in the northern reaches of the Carolina sandhills.
For years, Koprowski had been scanning the sandhills’ northern edge for land suited for a great golf course. He had discussed the idea with Aaron Oberman—an early minority investor in Broomsedge—sharing a vision to build a destination that was accessible to the public. What he found that afternoon, peering from the side of the road, was the canvas they had been searching for.
“I saw it and I'm like, ‘Holy cow, this is really good,’ ” Koprowski recalled. “So I did my due diligence, looked at the soils and downloaded a topo map and just do the stuff I’d often do. But the more I dug in, the more I felt like this was just a great site. It was phenomenal.”
Just 16 months later, Koprowski and Aaron and Ethan Oberman are ready to announce their Candyroot Lodge project—an elevated golf retreat that’s now part of over 1,200 acres about an hour from Charlotte and Columbia, S.C. Koprowski has designed the first course with plans for up to four courses eventually, including a par-3 course. The first course will open for preview play this fall with an official opening slated for Spring 2027.
Courtesy of Candyroot Lodge
The most unique aspect of the new project is the Obermans' vision to bring restorative wellness elements to a golf resort. Candyroot will have cold plunges and other hot-cold therapies like saunas, steam rooms, plus fitness facilities with golf-centric training and stretching capabilities, and miles of connected trails and a long-term vision of rejuvenation and connection.
“Our idea is to layer in a lot of other things that golfers don't necessarily experience when they go on trips,” Ethan Oberman says. “An example would be, when you go skiing for the day and take your boots off and grab a beer, people love getting in a hot tub. You feel good. Why not do that after playing 36 holes of golf? That’s a fun place to be. So it’s just leveraging things that people do in other activities but not in golf for whatever reason.”
Of course, the golf will be the main draw. Koprowski is excited for his first solo design, which will sit on the original 300 acres that was acquired. The routing sits on a windblown sand sheet amidst the eolian sandhills with massive valleys and slopes that cut through the land on the way down to Buffalo Creek.
Koprowski is going for a minimalist approach in his first solo design—utilizing many of the beautiful native grasses on the site rather than designing exterior sandy waste areas often seen on modern designs.
Billy Richards for Candyroot Lodge
Centuries of erosion—on land that centuries ago formed a coastline—have formed deep gullies that Koprowski has utilized in his design.
“A lot of the site you're kind of riding the high ridges, so the long views out there are just amazing,” Koprowski says. “So you get up on one of these ridges and you can just see almost the entire golf course. The long views are just like, ‘Wow,’ there's a lot of those moments.
A rendering of the second hole on Candyroot's first course.
Courtesy of Candyroot Lodge
“But then on the very next hole, there's a moment where you're like, you're just so low, you can't see anything else. You're like, what just happened? You know, and that's, it's just a funky, it's a funky site with a lot of interesting topography.”
The land for the rest of the property has been acquired, and the designer of the second course, plus the par-3 course, will be announced soon, the Obermans said.
“These will be all part of what we’re calling NextGen designers,” Aaron Oberman said.
A rendering of the first course's 13th hole.
Courtesy of Candyroot Lodge
It’s the first foray into golf development for the Obermans. Aaron is a former college golf and hockey player who has caught the golf bug. After he sold his software business, he looked for a project he was passionate about, and after meeting Koprowski and seeing Broomsedge being built, he took the plunge into this development—delivering exciting golf to the Charlotte area, which lacks great public courses. Lodging and other amenities will follow the development of future courses.
It’s fitting that this public golf development will be built just about 80 miles from Pinehurst, one of America’s first golf resorts, which was founded as a public-health retreat planned by James Walker Tufts in 1895.
Now as the golf boom expands, another golf-centric wellness destination is on its way to the sandhills. You can learn more about Candyroot here.
