Madison Capital’s Ryan Hanks Plans The Trail, a Walking-Only Gil Hanse Club in Union County, North Carolina
Charlotte developer Ryan Hanks of Madison Capital is planning The Trail, a walking-only private club by Gil Hanse near Interstate 485 in Union County, North Carolina, with a 36,000-square-foot clubhouse, 12 cottages, and a "sports barn."
Gil Hanse is designing The Trail, a walking-only private golf club that Charlotte developer Ryan Hanks of Madison Capital is planning on about 300 acres near Interstate 485 in Union County, North Carolina. Erik Spanberg reported the project in the Charlotte Business Journal on Oct. 2, with Hanks's firm, Madison Capital, as the developer. Interstate 485 is Charlotte's outer beltway, which puts the acreage within reach of the metro rather than a long drive past it.
On Oct. 5, a second report set out the building program. The Trail is to have a 36,000-square-foot clubhouse, 12 cottage units, and a "sports barn." Work is scheduled to start in 2027, and an opening is likely in 2028 or 2029.
Hanks and Hanse have already made a club of this type. With Colin Sheehan and Bert Guy, Hanks co-founded High Grove, a private club in Venus, Florida, where Hanse and Jim Wagner designed the golf. A March 2024 release from Hanse Golf Design put the club at the south end of the Lake Wales Ridge, on a former Valencia orange grove of roughly 1,200 acres, and described Hanks as a North Carolina-based real estate developer. The property holds an 18-hole course and a par-three course. The club was planned around walking, with no paved cart paths, cabins on the grounds, a 150-member limit, and no real estate component. GOLF.com reported that the first 18 holes opened in December 2025, and the short course followed in March 2026.
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What stands out is the size of the clubhouse. Thirty-six thousand square feet is a large figure for a walking-only club, a format in which the golf usually carries the day and the building often stays small, as at The Kingsley Club in Michigan, a walking-first club with a modest clubhouse. A house of that size reads less like a brief stop before the first tee and more like a full social house. With 12 cottages and a sports barn beside it, the plan points to a club meant to keep members for a day or a weekend, not only for a round.
Construction cost, clubhouse architect, builder, membership terms, and hole count for The Trail have not been made public.
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The clubhouse is the plainest clue to what Hanks is trying. At High Grove, he and his partners built a destination club on a remote Florida ridge, organized around walking, cabins, and a capped membership. The Trail carries that model to the edge of a major metro, close enough to Charlotte to work as a home club, and sets a 36,000-square-foot clubhouse at the middle of it. Whether a destination format holds up within driving distance of a city will turn, in large part, on that building.
Near Ann Arbor, Michigan, Hanse is also on the boards at Frontier Club, another private club with cottages and a capped membership aimed at an April 2028 opening.
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