"We were told at the beginning that (home buyers) would prefer to come on weekends and play golf and tennis. But we haven't found those people." David Murdock said that to the Los Angeles Times in 1994, and SFGATE brought the quote back in September in its history of the lake. According to the paper's account, by then he had put more than $200 million into the community. He also cut prices on the biggest homes from $3 million to $1.5 million and brought a professional golf tournament to the country club to get national attention.
He was right about one thing. The buyers came to live here full time rather than to visit on weekends. SFGATE counts about 660 residences around the lake today. Thirty-two years later, the lake club he built has a new owner and a new name. Caruso's Miramar Lake Club held a private grand-opening dinner on October 29, 2026. The way it plans to fill its tee sheet answers Murdock's old problem directly. The club will not depend on Sherwood alone for its members.
Forty Years Between Two Owners
For most of its history, the club side of Lake Sherwood has had one owner. The lake side goes back much further.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1905 | A cattle rancher named Matthiessen dams Malibu Creek. The new water is called Lake Matthiessen. |
| 1922 | Douglas Fairbanks films "Robin Hood" here, and the Sherwood name sticks. |
| Early 1980s | Ventura County supervisors deny Dayton Realty's plan for 1,400 homes around the lake. |
| 1984 | Dayton Realty drains the lake, citing a dam inspection. |
| Mid-1980s | Murdock buys the lake and the land around it, and the lake fills back up. |
| 2025 | Murdock dies. |
| Early 2026 | Caruso buys the Sherwood Lake Club. |
| April 2026 | The Real Deal reports that renovations have started. |
| July 7, 2026 | Caruso announces the club as the Miramar Lake Club. |
| October 29, 2026 | The Caruso family hosts a private grand-opening dinner. |
The handoff happened fast. In a Hollywood Reporter interview that Caruso republished on its own newsroom, Rick Caruso said that a broker cold-called him on a Friday while he was with his family in Newport Beach. He had never seen the Lake Club. After about 20 minutes on the phone, they had a deal. "I knew Dave Murdock well, and I knew the quality that he put into everything that he built," he said in the same interview. The two go back a long way. Caruso said Murdock once told him, "You've got to make a choice, Ricky, you're either going to build a great company or you're going to have a great golf game."
A Short Course Built for a Long Day
Caruso kept the most unusual thing on the property: the 18-hole, par-3 course designed by Jack Nicklaus. Caruso's July announcement calls it one of only two courses like it in the world and the only one in the United States. Each hole takes its cue from a well-known Nicklaus design somewhere else in the world. Caruso told The Hollywood Reporter the course was already "in really great shape." His team spent its money on everything around it.
That choice explains the rest of the plan. Caruso said that at a company event on the course, he played all 18 holes in two and a half hours. A full-length course usually takes him four to four and a half. A round that leaves two free hours makes room for everything else on the property, and Caruso has described a lot of everything else. He described this in the interview:
"The uniqueness of this club is that you will be able to come in the morning, work out, have lunch, play a round of golf with friends or family, lie by the pool, relax, have dinner and a drink."
Caruso's July announcement and his Hollywood Reporter interview describe the following around the course:
- An 18,000-square-foot clubhouse
- A fine-dining restaurant that Caruso calls "fine but still fun"
- A bar with entertainment every night
- A grill by the pool serving casual lunch
- A wellness center that looks out over the course
- A full gym, plus fitness and training facilities
- Tennis courts
- An updated, resort-style pool
- A calendar of social events for members
Murdock's 1994 pitch counted on people coming out for golf and tennis on weekends. Caruso's version runs from morning workouts to evening drinks every day of the week, and the short course makes that schedule possible. "It will be the kind of place that I wish I had in my neighborhood," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Members From Montecito and Calabasas
The biggest difference from Murdock's era is who can join.
Caruso already runs the Miramar Beach Club in Montecito, a private club next to Rosewood Miramar Beach. His company describes the Lake Club as the next step for that brand, moving it "from oceanfront to lakeside." Caruso told The Hollywood Reporter that Beach Club members will also be able to use the Lake Club. "It's a fairly quick drive from Montecito to Sherwood," he said.
The second link is closer to home. Caruso is building an expansion at The Commons at Calabasas that includes an eight-story luxury apartment building. In the same interview, he said membership in the Lake Club will come with the premium units there. "It's part of our ecosystem," he said.
Put that next to Murdock's quote. Murdock built a club and then went looking for people who would drive out to use it, and those people never showed up in the numbers he needed. Caruso is filling his club partly from groups he already has: members of his beach club in Montecito and future residents of the building he is putting up in Calabasas. The club is still, in Caruso's words, "behind the gates of the exclusive Sherwood community." Its membership simply reaches much further than the gates do.
The Miramar Lake Club website describes it as a private social club and asks interested people to submit a membership inquiry. The Montecito tie-in and the Calabasas apartment memberships are the paths Caruso has described so far.
The Lake Keeps Its Own Pace
The 165-acre lake sits next to the club. It has its own history and its own group of people who look after it.
Before the 1984 draining, about 100 older cabins circled the shore. On weekends, visitors from around Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley paid $2 to get in and rent boats and fishing rods. According to SFGATE, when Murdock took over he promised to keep lake access for the longtime lakefront owners who would not be part of the new homeowners associations. His team decided against reopening the lake to the public. It has stayed closed to outsiders since, and tall iron fencing now runs around it.
Those older lakeside properties are represented today by the Lake Sherwood Community Association. Its president, Geoff Patterson, bought his property on the lake in 1990 after working in the area on film shoots. He told SFGATE that he paddleboards on the lake and that a handful of residents fish there regularly. He and a group of residents also plan to bring sailing back. On a weekday afternoon drive around the lake for that story, the reporter didn't see a single boat on the water.
"The lake is quiet. The lake is serene. The lake is an eyepiece," Patterson said. "I think people mostly just enjoy looking at it, being around it, and not as many people go out on it."
So Lake Sherwood heads into its first winter under the new ownership with two different plans side by side. The club next to the water is being run as an all-day destination with entertainment every night, and its members can come from Montecito and Calabasas. The lake is still in the hands of the people who live around it. Their next plan for it, as Patterson described it, is to get some sailboats back on the water.
If you live behind the gates and would like a private conversation about what the new Miramar Lake Club could mean for your own property, Michelle Price Realty Group is happy to talk it through. Request a Confidential Consultation.
