Club Cabins at Bigwin Island, Lake of Bays, Muskoka
Imagine this: your own worry-free piece of prime real estate in Muskoka with an architecturally award-winning vacation home. Now imagine it just happens to sit on one of Canada’s top-ranked golf courses. The best of all worlds, right?
Bigwin Island’s new Club Cabins offer just such an opportunity, and then some. Not only do owners have personal use of their own luxury golf and vacation residence, but they can also take advantage of income sharing generated by the Cabin when they aren’t using it. For those who want it, professionally managed Cabin rentals are administered through Bigwin Island Golf Club as part of its popular exclusive golf Play-and-Stay packages.
That vacation ownership and private club membership can be served up with many conveniences not familiar to cottage owners—such as access to host resort-style concierge services—is the unexpected, and most welcome, detail. It is happening on Lake of Bays, Muskoka’s second largest lake, famous for its deep, crystal clear water, 170 kilometres of natural shoreline, and the abundant bays and inlets that give it its name.
It gets even better. Conveniently located almost centrally between Bracebridge and Huntsville, the lake is serviced by the popular waterfront communities of Baysville, Dorset, and Dwight. With great highway access around the entire lake, the area boasts many popular four-season activities, attractions, and resorts. It also enjoys close proximity to one of our nation’s treasures, Algonquin Park, and its over 2,400 lakes and 1,200 kilometres of streams and rivers. This means Bigwin Island Club Cabin owners and their guests have a wide variety of activities, including canoeing, fishing, mountain biking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and day hiking at their fingertips.
“We felt the Club Cabins really deserved great architecture,” explains Dave Smith, President of Eagle Landing, developer of Bigwin Island and the Waterfront Community. He is talking about Bigwin’s 40 luxurious Club Cabins: 1,250 to 1,350 square-foot Resort Condominium Units situated carefully along the fairways, with spectacular golf course and water views. “Our priority was, we did not want to change the landscape. Our goal was to not grade the land and to minimize tree removal. When people see the Club Cabins, we want it to appear as if they were placed there from the sky.”
This kind of attention to detail and respect for the 520-acre island’s natural integrity began well before a shovel hit the ground, when Eagle Landing began a nationwide search for an architectural firm that would share their vision for the project and provide the know-how to pull it off sustainably. The end result of that exhaustive search is three stunning Club Cabin models, each built to net-zero standards using environmentally sensitive construction and local materials. Recently, the Bigwin Club Cabin was the proud winner of the American Institute of Architects 2019 Housing Award in the category of Multifamily Housing. The award celebrates excellence in contemporary architecture and honours designs that “show the world how beauty, safety, sustainability, and comfort can come together.” The architect behind the Club Cabin designs is Brian MacKay-Lyons, from MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, one of Canada’s most celebrated architectural firms. “We thought, what’s the ultimate Muskoka architecture?” recalls Brian. “A big, sheltering roof in the woods. The roofs are just floating and creating a sense of refuge. They’re what holds each design all together.”
The roof’s centrality in the design of each model is carried through to the interior, where a cathedral ceiling soars up to a skylight in each of the Great Rooms. It’s all about natural light, and removing unnecessary barriers between ourselves and nature. “We think of the Great Room as a pavilion,” says Brian. “It’s a glass pavilion in the woods, really.”
Between the 1920s and the 1940s, a luxurious summer resort, the Bigwin Inn, attracted high-profile partygoers to the island from all over the world—including royalty and Hollywood starlets—and became a popular venue for the big bands of the day, including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians. Today’s Bigwin Island golf course, dining facilities, and recreational offerings recapture the magic of those glorious times. A 9-hole golf course designed by the legendary Stanley Thompson in 1922 has given way to a stunning par-72, world-class championship course, designed by celebrated golf course architect, Doug Carrick.
Bigwin’s island locale presented creative challenges for Dave and his team when it came to sorting out issues of accessibility and amenities, but they soon realized that being on an island gives the residents an advantage no other waterfront community in Muskoka can claim. “We’ve taken what possibly started out as a barrier, being on an island, and turned it into the only true gated golf course community in the area,” says Dave. In addition to the golf course and fine dining, residents on the island have access to myriad services, from housekeeping and cottage maintenance to concierge services and boutique, resort-style amenities. And when owners pack up and head home, they will have the same “peace of mind” they would have leaving their vacation or winter home in Florida or Whistler, because there is similar infrastructure in place to care for their property.
Granted, with two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, a Club Cabin won’t have an east wing to retreat to. But here’s the thing: That’s kind of what’s so great about it. The Club Cabins are not meant to be a substitute for a traditional cottage; rather, they are geared toward the avid golfer and active lifestyle seeker who is looking for assets that provide unique experiences. Along with a private equity membership in the Bigwin Golf Club, this unique Resort Condominium ownership opportunity provides owners with the flexibility of being able to use their Club Cabin
at times that suit their needs and garner income from a professionally managed rental program at other times. Return from rental opportunities along with return on use and enjoyment? Now that’s a “win-win”.
2019 America Institute of Architecture AIA Housing Award Receipient
The Bigwin Club Cabins have demonstrated to the world how “beauty, safety, sustainability and comfort can come together.”
