By Willie Kelly - September 2022

For a long time around Lake Anna, the promise of a premier golf community was something of an unfulfilled dream.  In 2019 Reef Private Equity, LLC bought the land and started bringing life to it, first through completing the Cutalong Golf Course and opening it for members only play in 2020.  With the golf course open for its second full year now, the Cutalong development team is steaming ahead establishing the infrastructure needed to support a community consisting of a championship golf course (open), a clubhouse, golf performance center, 891 resident lots including 56 “stay & play” units (short term rentals  with associated golf membership privileges), and an amenity center complex including an aquatic center, tennis courts, pickleball courts, 90 wet boat slips and a boat hotel with 200 slips.  Completion of all this capability is envisioned to take 8-10 years from today.

So why are you reading about this in a LACA newsletter?  LACA’s mission to “… preserve and protect the cleanliness, beauty, and safe use of Lake Anna and its watershed through communication, advocacy, education, and community involvement to benefit the membership and all lake users” makes digging into the details of impactful development initiatives like Cutalong something of an imperative.  All the planned infrastructure and growth of residents (permanent, semi-permanent and transient) that Cutalong promises no doubt carries a potentially significant impact to Lake Anna.

In coming months and years, we will be exploring this impact and bringing what we learn to our LACA members via this newsletter.  Our first deep dive will focus on the water and waste treatment capability being developed and planned for completion in the 1^st Qtr of 2023.  A community the size of Cutalong with a championship golf course, three restaurants, and a slew of amenities as stated earlier will generate a significant demand for water and generate a lot of wastewater to boot…which could be highly impactful to Lake Anna and its ecosystems.

Another deep dive will be to dig into plans for dredging along Contrary Creek to facilitate creation of the 90-slip private community dock and boat hotel capabilities.  We will explore potential environmental impacts to the lake associated with this activity and report on the Cutalong development team plans to mitigate them.

Every indication is that the Cutalong development team is truly focused not only on successfully developing this 1050± acre plot of land into the premier golf community of the Mid-Atlantic region…but doing so in an environmentally conscious manner demonstrating their commitment to enhancing Lake Anna’s position as the pre-eminent regional tourist attraction.