CottageClub

Summers with friends in the Shuswap Lakes area of British Columbia were special times for Brad Sanesh as he was growing up. The lake lifestyle was something he and his wife Kirsty wanted for their children.

Finding a similar lake community in Alberta with a place to build their dream cottage was tough going, until one fateful night at the games table. “A friend of mine said to check out CottageClub at Ghost Lake. He’d just sold his cottage north of Calgary to buy a place there.

He said it’s so close to Calgary that you’ll go two, three or four times more often,” says Sanesh, a junior high school principal. CottageClub is a 92-acre gated community on Ghost Lake, 45 kilometres west of Calgary on Highway 1A.

The lake was created in 1929 when then-Calgary Power Ltd. dammed the Bow River. The adjacent year-round resort development was founded in 2010 by developer Lamont Land. For Brad, Kirsty and their children, ages 10, six and two, the drive to CottageClub from their home in Airdrie was ideal.

“Most weekends, we’ll stay over Sunday night and drive into work and school in the morning, which gives us a three-day weekend every weekend. If we’d chosen a different location, that wouldn’t be possible,” Brad says.

Don Stengler, Lamont project manager, says there have been many changes and improvements to the resort since 2010. Originally, cottages were built on piles and potable water came from holding tanks. The developer has since added natural gas service to each home site and water comes from an on-site treatment plant.