Operations, april 25, 2014

     Western Golf Properties has been selected to replace Troon Golf as the manager of Revere Golf Club, a 36-hole facility in the Sun City Anthem community outside Las Vegas, Nevada. WGP, which is to assume control of the 400-acre club in June, has promised to “increase the property’s exposure to area residents and inbound visitors,” in part by delivering “the best golf and dining experience in the region.” Like most Del Webb-created golf properties, Revere features courses co-designed by Billy Casper and Greg Nash. Del Webb sold the club to a group led by Troon Golf in 2002, reportedly for $21.8 million, and Troon’s group sold it to Newport Beach, California-based CORE Realty Holdings LLC in 2007, reportedly for $28 million. A press release announcing WGP’s appointment didn’t explain why the management change is being made.

     Just weeks after it established a presence in Texas, Mosaic Clubs & Resorts has picked up a contract on a facility much closer to home. Mosaic, the high-end off-shoot of Affiniti Golf Partners, has begun managing Golf Club of Georgia, a 23-year-old property located practically right around the corner from its headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia. The club features a pair of 18-hole, Arthur Hills-designed courses, one of which (the Lakeside track) was named by Golf Digest as the nation’s best new private course for 1991. “This club has a very special culture and brand, one known for a stable of excellent players, notable golf tournaments, and the high caliber of its members,” Mosaic’s chairman, Whitney Crouse, said in a press release. Mosaic operates two other golf properties in Georgia, Waterfall Club in Clayton and the Manor Golf & Country Club in Alpharetta, and another in South Carolina.

     Arnold Palmer Golf Management has laid a claim on its third property in metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada. The Dallas, Texas-based firm has been tapped to manage Reflection Bay Golf Club, a Jack Nicklaus “signature” layout in Lake Las Vegas, a ritzy desert community that was flattened by the Great Recession. Reflection Bay, which opened in 1998, has been closed since 2009, but Golf Digest ranked it among the nation’s top 100 public courses for five years in the mid 2000s. Raintree Investment Corporation bought the track late last year and expects to reopen it before the end of 2014. Raintree also owns the Falls, a Tom Weiskopf-designed track in Lake Las Vegas, but the course will ll likely be converted to houses. The Palmer-branded management firm, an entity owned by Century Golf Partners, operates nearly 50 golf properties in 16 states. It has two other properties in greater Las Vegas, Rhodes Ranch Golf Club and Tuscany Golf Club.

     After three years of self-operation, a course once described as “a Pinehurst of the Prairie” has turned to professional management. Kent Freudenberg has hired Irwin Management Group, a “boutique” firm led by Hale Irwin, to run Awarii Dunes, his Jim Engh-designed layout in Axtell, Nebraska. Irwin’s primary goals, according to the Kearney Hub, are to “raise the national awareness of the course” and to generate more play, particularly among local golfers. As Irwin put it, “We want to create a buzz.” IGM manages Terradyne Country Club in Andover, Kansas, and late last year it offered to buy Dalton Ranch Golf Club, an 18-hole track outside Durango, Colorado.

     Thanks in part to a sales pitch that works wonders on financially strapped municipal officials -- “If you’re an owner of a golf course, private club, or resort, Billy Casper Golf will make you money” -- Billy Casper Golf has landed a five-year contract to manage the unprofitable city-owned golf complex in Prescott, Arizona. BCG will assume control of most golf-related activities at the 36-hole Antelope Hills Golf Course next month. The facility has reportedly lost between $234,500 and $323,450 in each of the past four fiscal years, but BCG, which will receive $84,000 a year for its services, has guaranteed the city annual payments of $1.3 million. Prescott reviewed bids from seven other management companies, among them OB Sports and Landscapes Golf Group.

     Beginning in January 2015, Los Angeles County’s parks and recreation department will attempt to do something that a succession of private-sector managers could not: Turn a profit at Norwalk Golf Course. The county may be undertaking a mission impossible, for the Los Angeles Wave reports that the nine-hole track, in suburban Los Angeles, “has never made a profit” since it opened in the early 1960s. Los Angeles County currently operates the nation’s largest municipal golf system, with 17 properties that feature 19 courses. Its revitalization plan for Norwalk involves $3.5 million worth of upgrades that it hopes SoCal’s golfers will take a liking to.

     For the second time, the District of Columbia’s elected representative has introduced legislation that could turn the capital city’s golf courses over to professional operators. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton wants the secretary of the interior to “conduct a study” to determine whether Washington, DC’s federally owned courses -- Langston Golf Course, Rock Creek Golf Course, and East Potomac Golf Course -- would be better off under the control of private-sector managers who’d agree to finance desperately needed capital improvements. Norton tried to get similar legislation passed in 2007, without any luck.

     Integrity Golf Company has been directed to restore confidence among the members of a Japanese-owned golf property in Greensboro, North Carolina. Forest Oaks Country Club closed briefly earlier this month, after its Raleigh-based management company, ES2 Sports & Leisure, declared for bankruptcy protection. ES2, which operated the property as Proehlific Club at Forest Oaks, had been in place for just a year before it got caught in a financial squeeze. Tadashi Hattori, one of Forest Oaks’ co-owners, is familiar with Integrity’s abilities, for it manages a golf property he owns in Orlando, Florida, Hunter’s Creek Golf Club. “The future of Forest Oaks Country Club could not be brighter,” Hattori wrote in a letter to the club’s members, “and we are excited to be able to restore the club to the level of service all our members deserve as soon as the court allows.” Integrity’s portfolio includes 20 golf properties in Florida (among them Golden Bear Golf Club in Windermere) and a handful of others in Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

     Silver Companies is taking resumes from companies interested in operating Cannon Ridge Golf Club. The 11-year-old facility, part of the Celebrate Virginia community in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has been closed for more than a year, and Silver is said to be at work on “a business plan to make Cannon Ridge profitable.” Bobby Weed, who co-designed the course with former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman, is currently overseeing a renovation that’s expected to wrap up later this year. The course is expected to reopen sometime next year.

     The company that will build Mike Keiser’s Sand Valley golf complex in central Wisconsin has secured a lease on one of the state’s premier golf properties. Last month, Oliphant Golf took over the Golf Courses of Lawsonia, a historic 36-hole complex owned by the Green Lake Conference Center, in Green Lake. Oliphant is intimately familiar with the courses, as it’s provided maintenance services for them since 2011. Lawsonia’s centerpiece is its Links course, a William Langford design that checks in at #52 on Golfweek’s list of the nation’s best classic courses. The conference center describes the facility’s Woodlands track, a Rocky Roquemore design, as “a modern target course” and “an unforgiving ogre.”