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The "Instability" of Colorado Golf Club

Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Comments
Anybody who watched the Senior PGA Championship on TV last weekend had to be impressed with Colorado GC, the Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw course outside Denver making its debut as a major championship site. Like just about every course that duo designs, the course looked natural, quirky, challenging and fun to play.

Can you sense the "but" coming?

Turns out Colorado GC is in a bit of a tight spot, financially -- which really shouldn't be a big surprise, considering it opened three years ago, just about the time the recession wave began to break over golf's shoreline. In his report from the Senior PGA in this week's issue of Golf World, senior editor Bill Fields talked to Mike McGetrick, founding owner of the upscale private club, who denied rumors the club would close after the tournament.

"No, we're not [closing]," McGetrick told Fields. "We hope in the next 90 days to be recapitalized, and that things are going to be great. We have 308 members, and Colorado GC is going to be here, whether I own it or somebody else does."

In a wrapup story published Tuesday, the Denver Post touched on the "instability" of Colorado GC, and floated the idea that the PGA of America might buy the club in an arrangement similar to its ownership of Kentucky's Valhalla GC. But McGetrick and PGA of America CEO Joe Steranka, while admitting a possible sale has been discussed, didn't sound optimistic that it would happen.

"The talks were never serious, in part because of the uncertainty of what's going on here," Steranka told the Post. "Valhalla is still a Kentucky-run private club; while the PGA owns it, we're very hands-off in the management. In my mind, corporate-run clubs lose their individuality, the personal culture."

You can read the entire Denver Post story here.

-- G.R.

Posted by Geoff Russell
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'The last good year in the golf business was 2001'

Saturday, May 1, 2010 Comments
The Legends of Indiana Golf Course, a "highly regarded" upscale 36-hole public facility in suburban Indianapolis, situated next door to the headquarters of the Indiana PGA Section and the Indiana Golf Association, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week. 

The filing had little in the way of details, with Legend owners claiming debts of between $1 and $10 million, and assets of between $1 and $10 million. Legends general manager Ted Bishop told The Indianapolis Star "It would be business as usual for our customers" while the facility restructures its finances.

You can read The Indianapolis Star story here.

It's a familiar story to anyone who has been following the golf course industry, public or private, the last two years or so. But this sentiment from Ron West, who operates four courses in the Indianapolis area and is a past president of the Indiana Golf Course Owners Association, was rather stark:

"I traveled the state a lot [during 2007 and 2008] and I bet in 2008 that 50 percent [of public courses] were on the verge of foreclosure. The last good year we had in the golf business was 2001, and since that point everybody's seen declines in revenue and rounds. The only courses around making any money all are lucky enough to have no debt service and 10-year-old carts and reasonable maintenance costs."

-- G.R.

Posted by Geoff Russell
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Black Diamond For Sale

Monday, April 26, 2010 Comments
Black Diamond Ranch, the Citrus County, Fla., private club whose Quarry Course is one of the most famous designs in Tom Fazio's portfolio, is for sale. The Tampa Tribune has the story here.

The move is apparently inspired by the retirement plans of Black Diamond's 81-year-old developer and owner, Stan Olsen, and not the sluggish economy. According to the report, Olsen wants to sell the entire facility, which includes two 18-hole courses and one nine-hole course (all designed by Fazio), a 28,000-square-foot clubhouse and 550 acres of undeveloped land.

The Tribune story says the real estate firm retained to broker the sale, Plasencia Group, Inc., has not set an asking price.

The Quarry Course, which opened in 1987, has been a mainstay on the Golf Digest list of "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses" for more than two decades (it currently ranks 89th). It features a three-hole stretch that plays along the edge of, into and then out of an abandoned rock quarry.

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Huizenga Sells The Floridian

Thursday, April 8, 2010 Comments
Wayne Huizenga has sold The Floridian Golf & Yacht Club, his private golf club in Palm City, Fla. The buyer is Houston businessman Jim Crane. The price? $25.6 million, according to Florida real estate records.

Jose Lambiet has the details here and here.

Huizenga ran The Floridian like a true benevolent dictator. The club's approximately 200 members (who included Jack Welch, Dan Marino and Rush Limbaugh) were hand-picked by the Waste Management billionaire personally, and informed of their annual membership renewal by letter each August (how did you know if your membership was revoked? you didn't get a letter). Of course, the price was right: memberships were free and there were no annual dues.

That will reportedly change under Crane. Existing members (and new ones, since Crane hopes to expand the club) will be asked to pay a $25,000 initiation fee and $12,000 in annual dues. 

According to Lambiet, Huizenga paid $750,000 in 1996 for the land on which The Floridian resides. But Huizenga later told Business Week that he spent $75 million developing the club, which includes a clubhouse, three guest cottages, deepwater docks and, of course, its Gary Player-designed golf course. 

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Membership Group Buys Stone Eagle

Saturday, April 3, 2010 Comments
Stone Eagle, in Palm Desert, Calif., has been saved. The details are in this story in The Desert Sun.

The private 18-hole club, featuring the only Tom Doak-designed course in the Palm Springs area, has been shut down for about a month, and in foreclosure since the beginning of the year. But 14 people -- seven couples, six of them members at Stone Eagle -- have bought the club for cash. The story doesn't include a price, but recent reports said a larger group of club members was trying to raise $12 million to buy it.

Stone Eagle opened in 2005. Memberships cost $100,000, and the story claims the club had 190 members at the time of the foreclosure. The new ownership group has made no announcement regarding membership structure in the future. But local officials are just pleased the club has a future.

From the story: "The purchase and reopening of the club provides some much-needed good news for golf courses in the valley, which have been hit with dwindling membership and a drop in players as a result of the recession. 'It's terrific for the whole desert,' said Tom Cullinan, general manager at Stone Eagle. 'Golf is our lifeline.' "

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Cher's Hualalai Home Sells for $8.7 Million

Saturday, January 23, 2010 Comments
The entertainer Cher sold her house on the golf course of the Hualalai Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii this week, and she didn't do too badly.

The house -- on .75 acres, with 8,800 square feet, six bedrooms and a view of the Jack Nicklaus designed layout (which is hosting this week's Champions Tour event, the Mitsubishi Electric Championship) and the Pacific Ocean -- sold for $8.7 million. Reports had it valued at between $8 and $12 million.

The Honolulu Advertiser has the story here.

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Golf Houses For $100 Million

Friday, January 22, 2010 Comments
Now this was kind of a fun article, even if it has no basis in reality -- at least not my own. TheStreet.com, using figures provided by the real estate website Zillow.com, has a list of homes in the U.S. for sale for the staggering price of $75 million and up.

Two of them have a golf connection. 

The first is "Tranquility," a 10,000 square-foot on 210 acres near California's Lake Tahoe. Built by Joel Horowitz, "one of the co-founders of Tommy Hilfiger," the house has a staircase modeled after one that was on the Titanic, a cigar lounge inspired by one at New York's St. Regis Hotel and -- outside -- a two-hole golf course. Asking price: $100 million.

The second is Albemarle House in Charlottesville, Va. The house has 45 rooms and more than 25,000 square feet, and it is the centerpiece of a 300-acre property with three ponds, guest cottages and -- ta-da -- an 18-hole golf course designed by Arnold Palmer. The catch is that the course hasn't actually been built yet, which -- in our opinion -- makes the $100 million price tag seem a little steep.

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Chambers Bay Getting Hotel, Clubhouse?

Thursday, January 21, 2010 Comments
Washington's Chambers Bay is hosting the 2015 U.S. Open (and before that, the 2011 U.S. Amateur), so there is no time like the present to build a proper clubhouse, hotel and other accoutrements the place will need to host a big-time event.

James Burkhouse is a former University Place, Wash., resident, who as a youth played on the beach near the gravel mine that eventually became the site of Chambers Bay. He is now president of Ventur-Hospitality, a hotel and resort development company based in Bruno, Calif., that has the contract to build a clubhouse, a hotel, a retail center and other facilities at Chambers Bay. Burkhouse is still trying to secure financing for the project.

The Tacoma News-Tribune has a story about Burkhouse and the Chambers Bay project here.

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Byron Nelson Championship Site Faces Foreclosure

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Comments
The Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas -- better known to this audience as the home of the PGA Tour's HP Byron Nelson Championship -- was the subject of a foreclosure filing today in Dallas.

According to reports, the facility's creditor, U.S. Bank NA, "is seeking repayment of a $183 million loan on the property" from the resort's owner, Los Angeles-based BentleyForbes, "and has scheduled a forced sale on Feb. 2."

The Dallas Morning News called the foreclosure filing "the largest in North Texas in more than 20 years." The newspaper's story on the filing is here. The Dallas Business Journal's report is here.

Of course -- as in many foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings -- three words are being used to describe the activity at the facility in question: business as usual.

"We do not expect any change in our day-to-day operations or services," Las Colinas Four Seasons general manager Michael Newcombe told the Dallas Morning News. "We are proud of the nearly $60 million in improvements that our owners have made to our property over the past two years."

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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Tiger's House Going Ahead as Planned?

Friday, January 8, 2010 Comments
If you came to Deeds and Weeds hoping to learn the whereabouts of Tiger Woods, you're out of luck. But we can report -- or at least tell you that the Palm Beach Post is reporting -- that recent clues suggest Woods plans to finish the house he is building in Jupiter Island, Fla.

The link to the Post item is here.

-- G.R.
Posted by Geoff Russell
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