Country Club Living: work starts on Toowoomba’s first retirement village with golf course

Based on the Toowoomba’s northwestern fringe, this resort will offer residents wide open spaces and plenty of room to stretch their legs and swing a golf club.

Work will start within months on Toowoomba’s first retirement village with a private nine-hole golf course, with the developer hoping it can set itself apart from the competition.

Country Club Living, which has developed over-55s resorts across Australia, was approved in March by the Toowoomba Regional Council for a $100m, 183-dwelling on a parcel of land on Gowrie Junction Rd in Cotswold Hills, just south of the Toowoomba Bypass.

Dubbed Toowoomba Fairways Country Club, the precinct will be home to more than 250 residents aged over 55 by the time it is complete.

Along with a number of recreational features like a tennis court, croquet garden, billiard tables, swimming pool and bowling green, the resort includes a golf course only for the use of residents and their guests.

Head of sales and marketing Scott Waldron said with Toowoomba’s retirement living sector already filled with competition, the golf course is an attractive feature for many prospective residents.

“We built a very successful village in Victoria, and that’s the ninth village we had built, but we built it on an old golf course,” he said.

“We retained half of the holes and built the village and units on the other half and it sold exceptionally well.

Few residents can claim they have access to their own private golf course.

“We’ve taken a little bit of a line off that, because it’s fairly unique — there are not many resorts which have a private golf course on their sites.”

Mr Waldron said Country Club Living also operated on a different model to other resorts, which worked on a “land-lease” concept where you bought the house but paid rent to the land.

“We operate under the Retirement Villages Act, where the house is attached to the land,” he said.

“You pay a little bit more upfront because we are a premium product, but the ongoing living costs are much lower.”

Mr Waldron said the company hoped to appoint a lead contractor soon, with construction to start in early 2022.

“We’re expecting civil works to start in about January, so we’ll start putting in drainage for the roads,” he said.

CCL managing director Stewart Gull said Toowoomba Fairways would be an “exciting” addition to the city’s retirement resort offerings.

“Toowoomba Fairways Country Club will offer a range of on-site private facilities never before available to retirees in the Toowoomba district,” he said.

The first residents are expected to move in from early 2023.

For more information about the project, call Scott Waldron on 1800 865 233.

Originally published as Country Club Living: work starts on Toowoomba’s first retirement village with golf course