Semiahmoo and The Birth of Furry Creek
| While the setting for Semiahmoo is quite different than that of Furry Creek, it served as a model for the Furry Creek community I envisioned in 1990. |
This past Labour Day Weekend, Sally and I visited the Semiahmoo Resort and Spa to participate in a Celebration of Life for Craig Waddell, the best man at my wedding and one one of the most important people in my life. More about this later.
I have enjoyed visiting the Semiahmoo resort community, just across the US border, since it first opened in 1987, . The development includes a challenging golf course, a 200 room
Port Ludlow, designed by Robert Muir Graves, who was reputed to show considerable respect for its environmentally sensitive setting. However, I regarded Semiahmoo to be the perfect model for what we might create along the Sea-to-Sky highway.
| Over the years, the Semiahmoo community has developed with a mix of single-family, townhouse, and lowrise apartments. |
Like the Furry Creek community, the Semiahmoo property had a checkered financial history. The hotel, restaurants and spa closed at the end of 2012. In June 2013, the hotel was purchased by a new owner for only $19.5 million and following extensive renovations, the resort re-opened for limited operations in late summer 2013. Since then, additional facilities have been built along the waterfront and new housing developments have proceeded.
More about the early history of Furry Creek can be found in this Golf BC reposting of an earlier blogpost about the origins of the community. https://britishcolumbiagolf.org/uncategorized/2797-furry-creek-redux-michael-geller-s-blog