Transactions, september 27, 2013

     A family feud has enabled Henry Luken to acquire his fourth golf property in greater Chattanooga, Tennessee. At an auction last month, Luken bid $950,000 for Valleybrook Golf & Country Club in Hixson, which features a Chic Adams-designed golf course. The sellers were the children of Carl Drake, one of Valleybrook’s founders, who were reportedly hoping to get $2 million for the 50-year-old property. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that a court ordered the sale “to settle a simmering sibling financial dispute that has dragged on for months.” Luken also owns Eagle Bluff Golf Club in Chattanooga, Montlake Country Club in Soddy-Daisy, and Battlefield Golf Club in Ringgold, Georgia. He hopes to close on his purchase of Valleybrook this month and to make improvements to its course and clubhouse as a prelude to taking it private.

     Paulson & Company, a seller of golf properties earlier this year, has become a buyer again. The New York-based hedge fund operator has acquired a majority interest in the Bahia Beach resort community on Puerto Rico’s northeastern coast. Bahia Beach, which occupies 483 acres in the town of Rio Grande, features houses, a St. Regis hotel, and an 18-hole, Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed golf course. Paulson’s investment will enable Bahia Beach to continue developing residential real estate and adding amenities. This spring, a bankrupt entity controlled by Paulson sold the Doral resort in Miami, Florida to Donald Trump and three properties in La Quinta, California, among them PGA West and La Quinta Resort, to an investment group controlled by Singapore’s government.

     A golf course in Oregon designed and originally owned by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. has been sold to a financial planner from Portland. It’s the first golf acquisition for Bob Hyer, who closed on his purchase of Eagle Point Golf Club outside Medford in late July. “It’s an all-year-round course, and I’m one of those guys that will play in the rain all day long just to be able to play,” he told the Medford Mail Tribune. Hyer doesn’t plan to make any significant changes to Eagle Point’s 17-year-old track, which he believes is “really cool the way it is.” Touchstone Golf has been hired to ensure that it remains so. The seller, PremierWest Bank, took possession of the property in early 2012, when its former owner gave it up in lieu of foreclosure.

     Changes are in store at Florida Keys Country Club, where a prospective ownership group plans facility improvements and new development. An entity led by Marvin Rappaport, a developer in the Keys, has contracted to buy the 53-year-old club, which has been suffering from what a board member described to the Florida Keys Keynoter as “age and the recession.” If the sale is consummated, Rappaport plans to upgrade Florida Keys’ Mark Mahannah-designed golf course and build a new clubhouse. The club’s existing clubhouse will be razed and replaced with 13 cottages and a 60-room hotel. “We’re going to have to spend some money to make that course what it should be,” one of Rappaport’s partners told the newspaper. Florida Keys, which was originally known as Sombrero Country Club, once had as many as 200 members. Today it has fewer than 50.

     A home builder in Bryan, Texas has agreed to buy the financially troubled Briarcrest Country Club, with the intent of -- surprise! -- maintaining its 18-hole golf course. In fact, Wallace Phillips aims to make improvements to the Marvin Ferguson-designed layout. “The golf course needs some tender loving care and some attention that the club hasn’t been able to afford to do,” Phillips told KBTX-TV. The club has been on the market for more than two years. The city of Bryan had hoped to buy it in 2011, but local voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea. The transaction is expected to close next month. Phillips intends to retain the services of Billy Casper Golf, which has been managing Briarcrest since 2010.

     Semiahmoo Resort, once one of the prime vacation destinations in the Pacific Northwest, has reopened under new ownership. An LLC led by Wright Hotels and Jerry Anches, a Seattle-based investor, paid $19.5 million for the 25-year-old, 1,100-acre resort, which features a hotel, a spa, and 18-hole golf courses designed by Arnold Palmer and Graham Cooke. The seller, a group led by the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, had been trying to sell the property for a year or more before closing everything but the golf courses in late 2012. The new owners have embarked on $7 million in improvements that they hope to complete by the spring of next year.

     For the second time in a year, Don Brown has acquired a struggling golf course in South Carolina. Last September, Brown and his wife purchased Bishopville Country Club in Bishopville. This summer, he and two partners bought Oakdale Country Club, a 51-year-old property in Florence that will receive a makeover and a new name, The Palms Course at Oakdale. “By the time we get through with everything we’re going to do,” Brown told the Florence Morning News, “I think this course and club will be as good as any in the area.” The new owners hope to debut a revitalized Oakdale sometime next summer.