The Smith Lake Golf Resort That Windemere Listings Still Sell Was Repealed in January
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
"I thought this was a good bill last year." State Sen. Garlan Gudger said that on the floor of the Alabama Senate in January, moments before the chamber voted unanimously to undo the very law he had co-sponsored twelve months earlier. The law in question had cleared a path for a 2,500-acre resort on Smith Lake, backed by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and built around golf courses designed by Nicklaus Design. By the time Gudger asked his colleagues to repeal it, the project he once championed had become an issue in a special House election in the Cullman area.
If you've been comparing lots in Windemere, the Smith Lake subdivision in Bremen, you've probably read a version of this line in the listing description: adjacent to the new luxury Smith Lake golf resort coming in 2025. Several active and recently sold listings still carry it. The trouble is that the state law making that resort legally possible no longer exists. It was written, passed, criticized, campaigned against, and then repealed, all within about eight months.
The resort itself was never a secret. Cullman resident and Trident Marina owner Jeff Tolbert began pitching a $275 million development in 2024, spanning roughly 2,500 acres near the Smith Lake dam, with plans for two golf courses, a hotel, a conference center, and enough jobs to move local unemployment numbers. Troon Golf and Nicklaus Design were attached to the concept. Tolbert brought the idea to the Cullman County Commission first, since a community development district can only be formed by a city or county government.
The commission said no. Unanimously, according to the record, in a March 2025 meeting.
That refusal is what pushed the project toward the legislature. Senate Bill 322, sponsored by Sen. Jabo Waggoner and Sen. Gudger, gave a wet municipality, meaning a city where alcohol sales are legal, the ability to annex a community development district even if that district didn't touch the city's existing boundary. Cullman is one of three wet municipalities in an otherwise dry county. The bill let Cullman reach out and annex the resort site regardless of geography, then form a CDD with taxing and bonding authority of its own. Gov. Kay Ivey signed it into law in May 2025 as Act 2025-294. The law included a sunset clause: if the developer hadn't broken ground by June 1, 2026, the annexation authority would expire on its own.
It never got the chance to expire. The Cullman County Commission's opposition became a campaign issue in local special elections that same year. Gudger, who serves as the Senate's president pro tem, pre-filed a full repeal before the 2026 session even opened, calling the project "the wrong project in the wrong place with the wrong incentives" in his own public statement announcing the move. The repeal bill, SB12, passed the Senate 34-0 on January 15, according to the official Senate roll call, and cleared the House about a week later with only a handful of abstentions. State Rep. Cindy Myrex, a Cullman Republican who is herself a Smith Lake realtor, carried the repeal in the House. Governor's signature followed. As of this writing, there's been no indication in state legislative coverage that the annexation authority or CDD framework has been revived in any form.
Here's the sequence as it actually happened, condensed:
Nine months. Passed, contested, repealed. That's a short shelf life for a marketing claim still circulating on subdivision listings today, months after the repeal took effect.
It's worth sitting with why this collapsed, because the reasons say something about how Cullman County residents think about growth near the lake. The county commission's objection wasn't really about the golf courses or the hotel. It centered on the annexation mechanism itself, a wet city reaching across county lines to absorb a non-contiguous property and stand up a taxing district without a public vote. Commissioner Corey Freeman raised that concern before the bill even passed. Gudger's own repeal announcement echoed it back almost word for word, framing the reversal around preserving local control rather than opposing the resort concept in principle.
That distinction matters if you're evaluating property near the proposed site. This wasn't a case of a developer's business plan falling apart. It was elected officials undoing the legal structure that would have let any version of that plan move forward through annexation. A new proposal could theoretically surface someday under a different framework, but the specific pathway that made Windemere's marketing language possible in 2025 has been legislatively closed.
None of this changes what Windemere actually offers. The subdivision sits near the Smith Lake dam with genuinely big-water views, and it comes with real, tangible amenities that don't depend on any outside development: a homeowners association that maintains the roads, the community pool, and the shared grounds, plus a deeded covered boat slip that comes with most lots and homes in the neighborhood. Those are the fundamentals worth pricing a lot on. A resort that no longer has a legal annexation pathway behind it is not one of them.
If a listing still references the resort as a nearby amenity, ask a simple question before you factor it into your offer: has this description been updated since January 2026? Public reporting on the repeal is easy to verify directly through the Alabama Reflector's coverage of the Senate vote or the Cullman Tribune's rolling timeline of the project. Either is a faster way to confirm current status than relying on listing copy that may have been written before the law changed.
This is exactly the kind of gap that shows up when a piece of land carries a story bigger than its deed. Having spent decades working oil, gas, and mineral transactions before moving into residential and lakefront sales, I've learned that the paperwork behind a property, not just the view from the dock, is what determines whether a price makes sense. A resort rumor can move a listing price. A repealed annexation law should move it back.
Buyers weighing Bremen against Crane Hill or other Smith Lake communities often anchor on amenities that feel adjacent to the property, marina access, dining nearby, future development. Bremen's actual draw, at least for now, is what already exists: proximity to the dam, deep year-round water in the Windemere section, and an HOA structure that keeps maintenance off your plate. That's a real value proposition. Just make sure you're paying for the neighborhood in front of you, not a resort that state lawmakers already took off the table.
If you're weighing a lot in Windemere or anywhere else on Smith Lake and want a clear read on what a listing's claims actually hold up to, Deanna Parrish has spent 35-plus years untangling exactly this kind of land and regulatory detail. Reach out before you write an offer that's pricing in a project that no longer has a path forward.
Whether you are buying a home in town or a retreat on Smith Lake, Deanna is your local connection. She leverages deep community roots to find properties that perfectly match your lifestyle. Connect with her to start your journey.
