THE BEST BY PAR
Fore! A new golf community, Panther National, is teeing up in Palm Beach County
IT’S ball or nothing at Panther National, Palm Beach County’s first new golf and lifestyle community in 20 years. The Florida development is the brainchild of Dominik Senn, a celebrated alpine ski racer from Switzerland. Senn, with developer Centaur Group, set out to create the modern, luxury golf and lifestyle community after he visited a few others across the Sunshine State and found they didn’t rise to the caliber he was looking for.
Panther National arrives in Palm Beach Gardens at a time when golf is on the upswing. The sport is more popular than ever in the United States with the American Golf Industry Coalition reporting in 2023 that roughly one in seven Americans played the year prior. Add to that the heightened demand for luxury housing and the Panther National development is an ace in the hole.
Frank Weed, CEO of Panther National, said the team set out to create a different kind of golf community, from the course to the clubhouse to the 218 modern, single-family homes and 24 smaller residences conceived by Miami-based Strang Design.
The fresh approach will be particularly evident in the 55,000break square-foot clubhouse, Weed said.
“This is not your grandfather’s golf club,” he said. “There’s no ballroom. This is intended to be a place of youth.”
Club memberships currently start at an initial $500,000 with an annual fee in the low $30,000s. Homeowners within Panther National’s gates currently receive a slight abatement, to an initial $400,000, with similar annual fees, Weed said.
The clubhouse will include a gym, a pro shop, indoor golf, spa facilities with locker rooms and spots for gathering indoors and outdoors. It will also include four dining concepts, including one inspired by Senn’s friend, Andreas Caminada of three-star Michelin restaurant Schloss Schauenstein in Fürstenau, Switzerland. Members, however, will have to wait until fall 2026 for the clubhouse’s anticipated debut. There will also be an additional lifestyle club with a spa, a community pool and a lap pool, and a performance center that will ground in October 2025.
For play, there’s the 18-hole, links-style Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, which the retired golfer designed in collaboration with PGA Tour player Justin Thomas. It opened in November 2023. There’s also a nine-hole, par-3 course, a 1-acre putting course, a practice area and facilities for training and fitting.
The property was “flat as a pancake” when the team acquired it, Weed said. Now, “we have 50-foot (plus or minus) elevations” on the golf course.
The community’s first properergy. ties hit the market in June 2022 with price tags ranging from about $4 million to $6 million for homes sitting on half-acre lots. Weed said about 22 of 30 of the homes in Phase 1 have sold, with future phases including homes on thirdacre lots as well as home sites priced up to $4.5 million where buyers can build their own custom properties with an approved builder. Including eight custom home sites, Weed said they’ve sold about $300 million in real estate so far.
Among the buyers are a handful of celebrities, though Weed declined to name names. The average purchaser of homes in the development to date is in their mid50s, with the average age of those purchasing only club memberships skewing younger, Weed said. Home prices at Panther National currently start at $4.5 million.
And not only do homes sit on the green, they are green. Large overhangs in the roof designs provide shade, which keep the homes cool, requiring less enThe grounds throughout the property will include all native plantings and will implement solar and water filtration programs.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘sustainable,’ because it’s not off the grid, but we’re using many efficient building systems and materials to be sure that this house lasts a lifetime,” Weed said.
The signature home models will range from 4,500 to over 10,000 square feet and include three to five bedrooms, two- to four-car garages with golf cart parking and electric car charging units, and private pools. Custom home sites range from half-acre to an acre in size.
The 382 gated acres that Panther National sits on were once part of Vavrus Ranch, which stretched 4,753 acres before its sale to Landstar Development Group for $20 million in 2013.
But if all that sounds a little too artificial, Weed wants you to know that his eponymous plants are in abundance just next door. Neighboring the property is a 2,400-acre nature preserve, which attracted birds and other wildlife to the lakes.
“I saw on one of our fairways yesterday we had wild turkeys walking across,” he said. “The golf course, will be one of the best in the United States and certainly, in the top three in Florida.”