A Different Kind of Golf School

There are lots of resorts in this country on the verge of going bankrupt -- and no shortage of ideas about what to do with the land and the assets of those resorts if and when they shut down.

But turning one into a school? We hadn't heard that one yet.

This story in Wednesday's Toledo Blade reports that a group of homes at Island Resort, a financially struggling resort in Ottawa Lake, Mich. that includes an 18-hole golf course (The Legacy Golf Club), is being considered as the site of a year-round charter school. The school is the idea of a company called Metro Educational Consultants of Southfield, Mich. They will present their plan to local school board next Monday.

Island Resort, which opened in 2002, was sold in December 2008 to Fifth Third Bank at a foreclosure auction. The bank was owed $2.7 million and the resort had delinquent taxes of $145,000, the story says.

The article points out that the golf course, designed by Arthur Hills and opened in 1997, is a separate entity of the resort, "is current in paying its property taxes," and is still in operation.

So if the charter school idea comes to a fruition, we predict they will have a heck of a golf team.

-- G.R.