Transactions, october 28, 2016

     Lansing, Illinois. The financially stressed Lansing Country Club, famous for being the site where “Champagne Tony” Lema met his tragic end in 1966, will soon fade into history, as its 110 equity members have sold their 175-acre property to a developer who’ll cease golf operations. Lansing opened in 1941, as a “sportsman’s” club, and, because it’s located in an area defined by steel mills and oil refineries, sometimes called itself a “blue-collar country club.” Its 4,763-yard course has nine “short” holes in Illinois and nine longer holes across the state line in Munster, Indiana. Chase Development, which reportedly paid $5 million for the club, plans to build an industrial park on the Indiana side of its property.

     Venice, Florida. There’s still a long way to go, but it appears that Coral Hospitality just might make good on its promise about putting at least two dozen golf properties into its management portfolio. An entity linked to the Naples, Florida-based company has reportedly paid almost $2.76 million for Jacaranda West Country Club, a venue that features an 18-hole, Mark Mahannah-designed golf course. The course, which opened in the early 1970s, is the centerpiece of a 600-acre community with roughly 900 houses. In 2013, Coral began to operate a handful of golf courses for the state of Georgia, and last year investment groups consisting mainly of Coral executives purchased two golf properties in Florida, Rosedale Golf & Country Club in Bradenton and Eagle Ridge Golf Club in Fort Myers. All told, these days Coral counts 10 golf properties in its collection, and goodness knows there are plenty more in the Southeast that are ripe for the picking.

     International Falls, Minnesota. The way Jordan Pearson tells it, he went out looking for a new house and ended up buying Falls Country Club. “I went out there, it’s absolutely beautiful, and by the next day I wrote a purchase agreement on it and it was accepted,” he told the International Falls Journal. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. Pearson, the owner of Island View Realty, doesn’t golf, and he hasn’t revealed what he’ll pay for the property. The Falls features an 18-hole, Joel Goldstrand-designed golf course that opened in 1998.

     North Augusta, South Carolina. The bank that controls the deeply troubled 27-hole golf complex at Mount Vintage Plantation has found a buyer: The community’s residents. Earlier this month, the Mount Vintage Plantation Homeowners Association paid $2.9 million for the Tom Jackson-designed complex, which has in its short history (it opened in 2000) endured a lawsuit from some of its members, a Chapter 11 filing, and a temporary shut-down. “We’re controlling our own destiny,” a spokesperson for the HOA told the North Augusta Star. “The main goal is to be a class-A golf club that serves members and contributes to the growth of the Mount Vintage community.” The golf complex is currently being managed by a group of members and home owners. The job may be a challenge, because last year the club was managed by KemperSports for several months and then by Integrity Golf Company.

     Grand Rapids, Michigan. Come the first of the year, the company that operates “four great clubs” in the Grand Rapids area will move into daily-fee operations. For an undisclosed price, Watermark Properties has agreed to buy the Golf Club at Thornapple Pointe, which features an 18-hole, Bill Newcomb-designed course. Thornapple Pointe will continue to accept public play, as it’s done since it opened in 1997, while Watermark markets its other venues with a “one membership, four great clubs” pitch. The company owns two private properties in Grand Rapids, Watermark Country Club and Thousand Oaks Country Club, as well as Sunnybrook Country Club in Grandville and StoneWater Country Club in Caledonia.

     Erie, Colorado. The owner of two golf properties in Colorado has acquired a controlling interest in the venue that serves as the home of the University of Colorado’s golf teams. SW Greens LLC paid an undisclosed amount for a piece of Colorado National Golf Club, a 13-year-old venue anchored by a Jay Morrish-designed golf course. Colorado National opened in 2003, as Vista Ridge Golf Club. It’s the fifth property in SW Greens’ portfolio, as the LLC owns Bear Dance Golf Course in Larkspur and Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock and manages two tracks for the city of Brighton. The LLC acquired its share of the club from Steve Kerr (no, not the basketball coach), who purchased Vista Ridge in 2008. Kerr made news in 2013, when he was convicted of tax evasion.

     Graeagle, California. Plumas Pines Golf Course, a property that was established in the late 1970s, has changed hands. Completing an agreement struck in early 2016, a four-member LLC led by the course’s director of golf, Brandon Bowling, paid an undisclosed price for the 146-acre property and its 18-hole, Homer Flint-designed golf course. The seller was Mark Cleary, who purchased Plumas Pines with his late brother in 2000. And if you like stories that go full circle, you’ll appreciate the fact that Bowling’s wife is the grand-daughter of the course’s original owners.

     McAfee, New Jersey. The abandoned golf property at the former Playboy Club in northern New Jersey is going to reopen next spring, under new ownership. The owner of the nearby Mountain Creek ski resort, a family-owned corporation led by Jeff Koffman, has purchased the 27-hole golf venue once known as Great Gorge Country Club. The 45-year-old complex, designed by George Fazio, had gone through several owners, the most recent being a Japanese corporation that defaulted on a $10 million loan. “From what we’ve heard, Great Gorge used to be the preeminent golf course in Sussex County and one of the top-ranked courses in New Jersey,” Koffman told the New Jersey Herald, “and we have every intention of bringing it up to those standards again.” When it gets back in business, the complex will operate as Great Gorge Mountain Creek.

     Kellogg, Idaho. Jeld-Wen Holdings Inc. has sold its last remaining golf property. The giant window and door manufacturer, a former sponsor of an event on the Champions Tour, has accepted $5 million for Silver Mountain Resort, a ski area that includes the nine-hole Galena Ridge Golf Course. In 2010, Jeld-Wen sold three resort communities in Oregon to a hotel company for $9.5 million. The group consisted of Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls (it has an 18-hole, Arnold Palmer-designed course), Brasada Ranch in Powell Butte (18 holes co-designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy), and Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond (regulation 18s by John Thronson and Gene “Bunny” Mason, plus an 18-hole executive-length track). Silver Mountain’s course was designed by Thronson and opened in 2010. Its new owner, Tryg Fortun of Eclectic LLC, told the Spokane Spokesman Review that Silver Mountain is “my favorite ski resort anywhere in the world.”