Stowe redesign fosters community
By John Steinbreder • July 10, 2026
STOWE, VERMONT | For someone who was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and has residences in that city as well as the North Carolina mountain community of Cashiers, Beau Welling does not usually find himself in winter sports getaways. But the past two years have been different in that way, due to the places he sometimes goes for his work.
There were the two weeks he spent this past February in the upscale alpine village of Cortina d’Ampezzo in northern Italy in his capacity as president of World Curling, for that was where the competitions for the sport that federation oversees were staged during the 2026 Winter Olympics.
And Welling had been to that Dolomite Valley town the previous spring for the World Junior Curling Championships, primarily to see whether that venue was ready for this year’s Games.
This stretch has also seen Welling, who runs his own golf course design firm, make several trips to this Green Mountain village to renovate a charming country track at the Stowe Country Club. Routed across an old dairy farm shortly after World War II in an area where red barns and clapboard colonials rise alongside stands of maples and pines and pastures divided by dry stone walls, it had long served as a vital part of the community, which today boasts a population of roughly 5,200 people. But the club and course both needed a lot of work, which is why the owners reached out to Welling.
His assignment at Stowe began in earnest in 2024, and since that time, he and his associate Chase Webb have revamped all 18 holes of what is now a par-71 track that measures 6,420 yards from the tips and offers four sets of tees. They reconstructed and regrassed all greens and tees; reshaped, regraded and regrassed the fairways; and upgraded the bunkers.
