Clear Creek Redefines Upscale Golf Club Digs

The tiny town of Johnson is appealing to the most refined tastes in Northwest Arkansas with its new golf, residential and commercial development. The natural layout of the land will be about the only thing spared at the new Clear Creek Golf Club.

John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods Inc., John Flake, chairman of the Little Rock real estate management firm Flake & Kelley, and Brandon Rogers, managing partner of Fayetteville’s Orion Realty and project manager at Clear Creek, are developing the planned gated community. It will include about 250 home sites and an 18-hole golf course on about 430 acres. It is located on John Tyson’s land just west of Willow Creek Women’s Hospital and Interstate 540.

There will also be commercial properties developed adjacent to the club as well as across Greathouse Springs Road from James at the Mill. Developers declined to reveal the dollar value of the project.

While the course — designed by world-renowned golf course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. — is expected to rival the best courses in the region, the subdivision will certainly be among the most elite in Arkansas.

“I think we’ve got the chance to do something special for golf and for a place to live in Northwest Arkansas,” Tyson said. “We are going to do our best.”

Flake, whose firm has overseen some of the state’s premier real estate transactions, added, “[Clear Creek] is the most extraordinary real estate opportunity I’ve had in my career.”

“There’s not a day goes by I don’t enjoy what we’re doing up here at Clear Creek,” Flake said. “We’re leaving Northwest Arkansas and the region with a project that will be unparalleled. I’m absolutely in awe of the beauty of Clear Creek.”

Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers is generally recognized as the most upscale subdivision in Northwest Arkansas. Clear Creek will be impressive in its own right with lots ranging from $109,000 (.45 acre) to $435,000 (3.41 acres). And the building requirements include a minimum of a one-story, 3,200-SF or a two-story, 4,000-SF house in phase I.

As of March 24, 15 of the 48 lots in phase I and 19 of the 43 lots in phase II had sold.

The golf course and residential area will be gated, with a manned gate at the main entrance off Arkansas Highway 112 and an electric gate entrance farther south on 112.

The building team at Clear Creek includes Virgil Knight Construction of Tontitown, C&S Custom Homes of Springdale, McMahon Brothers Custom Homes of Fayetteville and The J. Martin Co. of Fayetteville. Those companies will be the exclusive spec home builders at Clear Creek. Every builder will feature at least one home in the Parade of Homes next year.

Other companies will be allowed to build at Clear Creek pending approval from the Architectural Design Committee.

Construction will begin on five homes by April 1. The golf course will not open before spring of 2004.

The development will add several jobs in the community. There will be a golf course maintenance crew, clubhouse employees and a restaurant staff. Also, Rogers expects residential and commercial construction to continue for about 8-10 years.

Rogers and Orion Realty partner James Harkins have been holding weekend open houses at Clear Creek, taking prospective buyers on tours of the development. Both men came from Little Rock. Rogers had worked for Flake & Kelley for the past 10 years.

“The first thing we talk about to people is the privacy and the gated community,” Rogers said. “And we’ve worked extremely hard to preserve the natural beauty with the routed roads along the tops of ridges and various conservation easements. We have selectively cut for house sites. There will be a buffer of trees between the golf course and the lots. We did not want to encroach on the golf course.”

The lots will have a wide frontage, ranging from an average of about 200 feet to as much as 335 feet in phase I and an average of 150 feet to as much as 250 feet in phase II. This way, Rogers said, the houses will not be “stacked on top of each other.”

Rogers added, “About 95 percent of all the lots have privacy with either a ravine or the course behind their backyards,” Rogers said. “They’re not backing up to someone else’s backyard like track housing.”

The clubhouse will be just inside the front entrance, keeping the club traffic out of the residential areas.

Crowder Construction of Bentonville is doing the road and dirt work at Clear Creek. Also, CEI Engineering of Bentonville is the engineering firm with Rick Rogers its project manager.

The roads at Clear Creek will have plenty of curves. Rogers said that was done as much for aesthetics as it was to break up the monotony of the drive. And there will be specialty gas street lights throughout.

There will be several miles of walking trails throughout Clear Creek. Residents will also be able to walk the golf course prior to 8:30 a.m. each day.

To read what the architect says about the course, click here.