The Week That Was, november 3, 2019

     It turns out that ClubCorp’s prospective purchase of two golf properties from Toll Brothers was just a taste of what was to come.
     Last week, the giant owner/operator acquired seven venues from the big national homebuilder, all of them on the East Coast and in what ClubCorp calls “ideal locations near some of our key markets.” As the Philadelphia Business Journal reported last month, two of the facilities are Hasentree Club and Brier Creek Country Club, which are located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina. The rest of the collection, says a press release, consists of Oak Creek Golf Club in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, Jupiter Country Club in Jupiter, Florida, and three properties in Northern Virginia: Belmont Country Club, Dominion Valley Country Club, and Regency at Dominion Valley Country Club.
     ClubCorp describes the properties, its first acquisitions of 2019, as “exceptional lifestyle clubs” and promises to help their members “achieve the life and lifestyle to which they aspire.” All but one of them features signature golf – four courses by Arnold Palmer and one each by Tom Fazio and Greg Norman. The exception, Oak Creek, has an Ed Ault-designed layout.
     Toll hasn’t said why it relieved itself of these clubs, but a lighter corporate load will certainly enable it to concentrate on its core operations. Let’s face it: For Toll, golf has always been a side business. According to its website, the company has just one remaining venue in its golf portfolio, Parkland Golf & Country Club in greater Miami, Florida.

     Surplus Transactions – A homeowners’ association in Bend, Oregon has agreed to pay $6.4 million for the primary recreational asset in their gated community. The 26-year-old Broken Top Club features an 18-hole course, co-designed by Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish, that an online reviewer says “will not only flatter your game but also lift your spirits.” . . . Kennedy Wilson, a U.S. real-estate investment group, has sold its golf venue in Dublin, Ireland to a big Canadian hotel company. Northland Properties Group reportedly paid “about €50 million” (almost $56 million) for Portmarnock Hotel & Golf Links, a 160-acre spread that features a Bernhard Langer “signature” course that was co-designed by Stan Eby of European Golf Design. . . . Regarding the recent sale of Cape Fear National at Brunswick Forest, a recently upgraded (new greens, renovated bunkers), 10-year-old club outside Wilmington, North Carolina: Atlantic Golf Management reportedly paid a measly $400,000 for the club and its 18-hole, Tim Cate-designed course. No wonder Atlantic calls its purchase “maybe the best acquisition we’ve made with the most possibilities.”

     Castle Stuart, the home of a true world-class golf course that’s hosted the Scottish Open four times, has renewed its desire to build a second championship-worthy layout, an idea originally floated years ago. The Press & Journal reports that the bucket-list property in Inverness, created a decade ago by a team led by the late Mark Parsinen, recently submitted a development application and has been for several months “in discussions with a number of potential investors.”
     One of those potential investors is the Arnold Palmer Group, which in 2015 had an agreement to design Castle Stuart’s second course and become an equity partner in Parsinen’s ownership group. The status of that agreement hasn’t been discussed by either party, but it’s evident that Castle Stuart is now weighing its options.
     Parsinen died earlier this year, and Castle Stuart’s future appears to be in the hands of Grant Sword, a hotelier and a longtime investor in the property. If he sticks to Parsinen’s master plan, Sword will build a pair of hotels, the obligatory spa, and a short course of some kind.
     The forthcoming course will complement Castle Stuart’s existing layout, which was co-designed by Parsinen and Gil Hanse and checks in at #53 on Golf Digest’s list of the World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses. One suspects that Sword wants the new track to be of comparable quality.

     Pipeline Overflow – Forrest Richardson, an evangelist for short, fun-to-play courses, has been tabbed to design a 12-hole track for an upscale RV park in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. The course, scheduled to open in 2021, is tentatively being called On the Rocks, and it’ll be accompanied by “innovative playgrounds,” “meditation trails,” and, most importantly, 800 spaces for land yachts. . . . Truong An Golf Company, a Vietnamese developer, has green-lighted the second 18-hole course at Stone Valley Golf Resort, a 500-acre community in Hà Nam Province. Brian Curley, who believes that his first course at Stone Valley is “unlike most anything in the Hà Nội market,” reports that the venue’s third nine is now under construction. . . . A convention center, an amphitheater, a hotel, and an 18-hole golf course are among the attractions planned for Kisumu, a city located along Lake Victoria is southwestern Kenya. Local government officials believe that a revitalized waterfront in Kisumu will boost the area’s economy and attract tourists.

     Duly Noted – Another sign of growing stability in U.S. private-club operations: Wilderness Ridge Country Club, which has catered to daily-fee golfers since it opened in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2001, expects to become a members-only venue in 2021. “Golf is a popular sport in this part of the city,” the club’s general manager told a local newspaper, “and we're a good location to provide what people are looking for.” . . . The seven resident-owned golf courses in Sun City West, a place that markets itself as “Arizona’s finest golf retirement community,” ring up, on average, almost 289,600 rounds a year – nearly 41,400 apiece. Still, the community’s golf operation lost more than $1.4 million last year, a deficit that was covered by the dues that residents pay. . . . Australia’s golf-design business has experienced another merger. Karrie Webb, an LPGA star and a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, has joined forces with Ross Perrett, who had a long association with the late Peter Thomson.

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