Out past the pine stands north of Camden, where the land starts to roll and the soil turns the color of raw sugar, something is being graded into shape that most people driving Highway 1 through Lugoff have never heard of. It has no sign yet. It barely has grass. By late October it will have golfers on it, and by next spring it will have national golf writers using words like "significant" about a piece of ground most Kershaw County residents couldn't point to on a map two years ago.
That project is Candyroot Lodge. And the reason it belongs in a conversation about Lugoff, not just a golf magazine, has less to do with fairways than with a vote Kershaw County Council just took.
What's Actually Rising Off Mt. Pisgah Road
Candyroot Lodge is a 1,200-acre golf retreat being built by brothers Aaron and Ethan Oberman on land assembled from four separate timber parcels in the Sandhills near Jefferson. The first of what's planned as four championship courses was designed by Mike Koprowski, the architect who put nearby Broomsedge Golf Club on the map and landed it a spot on Golf Digest's Best New Courses list. Koprowski has described his approach at Candyroot as "extreme minimalism," meaning he shaped almost nothing. The land, with its 80 to 90 feet of elevation change through natural sandhill ridges and gullies, is doing most of the design work itself.
The full master plan, laid out by planner Hart Howerton, eventually includes four full 18-hole courses, a lighted par-3 course designed by LPGA Tour player Michelle Wie West, on-site lodging, and wellness amenities like saunas and connected walking trails. None of that is finished. What's finished, or close to it, is Course One.
The One Word Every Golf Writer Keeps Using
Here's what makes this different from almost everything else being built in South Carolina golf right now: it's open to the public.
Golf trade press has been tracking a wave of new South Carolina course construction, and nearly every project on that list, places like 21 Golf Club, Kawonu, Orange Hill, New Holland, and Cypress Shoals, is private. Candyroot is the outlier. Ethan Oberman has said his one-word mission for the whole property is access: close enough to a major airport, close enough to a city, and open to anyone willing to buy a day pass rather than a membership.
That single decision is why a golf course near Jefferson is showing up in Forbes and Golf Course Industry instead of staying a quiet local curiosity. It's also why it matters to people who live nearby rather than just people who play golf. A private club opening near Lugoff would be someone else's amenity. A public one is closer to a shared one.
Why Kershaw County Filed This Next to Its Factories
This is the part that would be easy to miss if you only follow golf writers and not county council agendas.
Kershaw County held a public hearing and took up third and final reading on an ordinance adding Candyroot Lodge to a multi-county industrial park the county already shares with Fairfield County. That's the same legal and financial mechanism Kershaw County uses to attract heavy manufacturing, not resort golf.
Look at what else has gone through that door. The Central South Carolina Megasite, a CSX-designated industrial site, sits in Lugoff. INVISTA broke ground on a nylon polymer facility in Lugoff. Orion Performance Compounds committed $13 million and up to 54 new jobs to a Kershaw County operation. Those are the kinds of projects multi-county industrial parks are built for: tax incentive structures aimed at manufacturers who need a reason to choose Kershaw County over somewhere else.
A golf resort getting filed alongside that list is unusual enough that it says something about how the county views the project. It isn't treating Candyroot like a tourist attraction passing through. It's treating it like an economic asset worth the same paperwork as a factory, which tells you the county expects it to behave like one, drawing outside dollars in rather than just giving locals a new place to play.
One honest wrinkle worth naming: the address golf directories list for Candyroot puts it in Jefferson, over the county line in Chesterfield County. But the ordinance Kershaw County Council is voting on treats the project as reachable through the county's own economic development toolkit, in the Kershaw and Mt. Pisgah area. Both things are true. The Sandhills don't respect county lines any more than the golf course routing respects a straight fairway, and Kershaw County has decided this project is close enough, and valuable enough, to claim a stake in.
This Fall, By the Numbers
If you want to see any of this before the ribbon cutting, the window is narrow and specific:
- Day passes for preview play went on sale September 8 and run $175 for unlimited golf, select food, and a welcome pouch
- Preview play itself begins October 28 and runs Wednesday through Sunday only
- Daily access during preview is capped at 40 golfers, so advance booking matters more than showing up and hoping
- A full public grand opening, with the second course and more amenities online, is planned for spring 2027
- Longer term, the property will add a central gathering space called the Golf Hang with a pro shop and fire pits, two on-course comfort stations, and eventually the lighted Michelle Wie West par-3 course for after-dark play
None of the wellness amenities or lodging are ready yet. Aaron Oberman has said cabin accommodations probably won't come online at scale until around 2028. What's happening this fall is the first course and nothing else, which is exactly the point. This is a soft opening for people willing to be early.
While the Grass Grows In
You don't have to wait until October to spend a Saturday outdoors near Lugoff. Goodale State Park in Cassatt already has what Candyroot is still building: a place people already use without a day pass. Goodale's canoe trail winds three miles through cypress trees along Pine Tree Creek, past a Civil War-era mill pond, and the park runs recurring Family Fun Days with kayaking lessons, nature walks, and a chance to meet park rangers, sponsored by the Friends of Goodale State Park along with the state parks system and the county.
It's a smaller, older, quieter kind of outdoor investment than a 1,200-acre golf resort with an LPGA-designed par-3 course. But it's the same county, and it's proof that Kershaw County's relationship with the land around Lugoff and Camden has always run in this direction, even before a Forbes headline noticed.
What Candyroot adds isn't a replacement for that. It's a much bigger, much newer chapter of the same story, and for the first time, the county is filing that chapter next to its factories instead of its parks department.
Half Moon Realty keeps an eye on stories like this because they tell you something about a place beyond the median price on a listing sheet. If you're curious what else is changing in Lugoff, Elgin, Camden, or anywhere else in the Midlands, Half Moon Realty is always happy to talk it through, no matter where you are in figuring out your next move.
