Not so long ago, golf courses and upscale housing were the yin and yang of U.S. residential development –- a pure, unadulterated expression of the American dream. And nowhere in the nation was the seemingly insatiable hunger for a house alongside a fairway more evident than in the Coachella Valley of California, where dozens of private golf communities took shape around courses designed by some of the world’s most famous architects.
Today, houses in those communities aren’t selling, nor are memberships in their high-priced golf clubs. The bond between golf and real estate has been broken, perhaps forever -– and not just in California.
Mike Perrault of the Desert Sun recently reported on the current relationship between golf and housing in the valley. Here’s a condensed version of his story:
The green-grass playgrounds of Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, and La Quinta -- loved by retiring and relaxing presidents -- are bleeding money and members.
The recession exposed the vulnerability of the business model that created an unbreakable linkage between golf and real estate.
“We’re entering a new normal; we’re in a recasting era,” said Pete Halter, chairman of The Halter Companies, an Atlanta firm that advises developers. “We can’t think that this will be over soon. Things have changed for good.”
Among the forces reshaping the relationship between golf and real estate:
-- Fewer people play golf, and baby boomers don’t have the time, money, or interest in the game their parents did. The number of golfers in the U.S. has fallen by 13 percent in the past five years.
-- A glut of club memberships. There are at least 12,000 openings in the Coachella Valley. Nationally, golf memberships have dropped by a million since the early 1990s.
-- The housing bust. Nearly 25 percent of homes for sale in the Desert Multiple Listing Service are on golf courses.
There’s much at stake, said Robert Borsch, partner at Club Mark Corporation and president of the homeowners association at Desert Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is touted as the world's largest private golf community.
At a typical country club, a 65-year-old member might spend $95,000 a year on dues and fees, Borsch said. That translates into about $1.4 million across 15 years. So a club with 500 members would take in about $700 million during that period.
For 80 clubs in the valley, that comes out to about $56 billion, Borsch estimated. . . .
Of 3,400 courses built across the country during the past decade, 93 percent are daily fee courses. Private membership courses, predominant in the Coachella Valley, are in competition with courses designed to cut costs and attract cost-conscious golfers.
“The places that are membership-driven have a lot more competition,” said Michael Horne, whose Palm Desert-based real estate firm, the Horne Team, works mainly with clients in Sun City Palm Desert and Sun City Shadow Hills. “Spending membership dues and using a course three or four months -- it's a tough sell versus pay-to-play.” . . .
The chatter nowadays at cocktail parties and driving ranges is often about friends trapped at declining communities where memberships are drying up and homes don’t sell, Borsch said.
Residents at Palm Desert Country Club lived through the nightmare. After its owner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009, the fairways died and the ponds stagnated. A new owner bought the club in September, promising to restore its luster.
But even when the economy recovers, golf industry analysts are even more concerned about societal changes.
Many younger people would rather spend time with family than hours on a golf course. Or they’re more focused on iPhones and iPads, electronic games, playing tennis, taking yoga and Pilates classes.
Those who are interested in a country club demand that the communities have amenities such as health spas, gardens, tennis courts, and other outdoor pursuits. . . .
Developer William Bone is chairman of Sunrise Company, which has built more than 12,000 homes in the valley at places such as Indian Ridge and Royal Oaks country clubs and Marriott’s Rancho Las Palmas Resort.
Sunrise’s latest project is the upscale Toscana Country Club in Indian Wells, where about half of the proposed 646 homes have been sold since 2004. About 40 million-dollar homes have been sold so far this year, a welcome trend considering as few as a dozen were sold during some previous years.
Bone has seen his share of economic downturns in the valley since he started building in 1973 on large swaths of land in Rancho Mirage. And he has noticed the popularity of golf is cyclical.
Bone said he believes there will be a rebound to this economic slump as well, with the caveat that other, larger forces are at play.
“I think you’re going to see more limited growth going forward,” Bone said. . . .
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
china What’s Next for Retief Goosen?
Retief Goosen’s projects in South Africa may have crashed, but the golf pro’s agents at IMG have ensured that their client gets a soft landing.
The aspiring “signature” designer and vintner, a two-time winner of the U.S. Open championship, will lend his name to a 27-hole complex that’s to be built at Dayi Smokey Mountain resort community in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan Province.
“We could start construction early next year,” Goosen told the Sunday Times earlier this year.
Let’s hope China’s government agrees.
To date, Goosen has designed just one golf hole, the 18th at Legend Golf & Safari Resort outside Pretoria. He’s been commissioned to design courses at two other golf communities in South Africa, in the suburbs of Johannesburg (Lizard Point) and George (Lagoon Bay), but both have become victims of the global economic collapse.
The site at Dayi Smokey Mountain, Goosen says on his website, is “covered in trees and very steep,” but the golf complex “should have a very open, green, undisturbed look to it.”
The nines will range in length from 3,500 to 3,772 yards, and there could be four of them when all is said and done.
Brit Stenson, the director of design at IMG’s office in Cleveland, Ohio, will serve as Goosen’s “ghost” designer.
Some information in this post originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
The aspiring “signature” designer and vintner, a two-time winner of the U.S. Open championship, will lend his name to a 27-hole complex that’s to be built at Dayi Smokey Mountain resort community in Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan Province.
“We could start construction early next year,” Goosen told the Sunday Times earlier this year.
Let’s hope China’s government agrees.
To date, Goosen has designed just one golf hole, the 18th at Legend Golf & Safari Resort outside Pretoria. He’s been commissioned to design courses at two other golf communities in South Africa, in the suburbs of Johannesburg (Lizard Point) and George (Lagoon Bay), but both have become victims of the global economic collapse.
The site at Dayi Smokey Mountain, Goosen says on his website, is “covered in trees and very steep,” but the golf complex “should have a very open, green, undisturbed look to it.”
The nines will range in length from 3,500 to 3,772 yards, and there could be four of them when all is said and done.
Brit Stenson, the director of design at IMG’s office in Cleveland, Ohio, will serve as Goosen’s “ghost” designer.
Some information in this post originally appeared in the October 2011 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Week That Was, december 25, 2011
. . . united states 2012: A Better Year?
The powers that be at the American Society of Golf Course Architects are feeling optimistic about the industry’s immediate business prospects.
Of course, they’ve lowered their expectations. Nobody at the ASGCA -- or anywhere else in golf, for that matter -- expects a substantive amount of new construction to begin anytime soon. That being said, however, the group expects existing U.S. golf properties to start spending money on upgrades in 2012.
“There are clearly more U.S. clubs talking about renovations, especially at the greens committee level,” said Rick Robbins, the ASGCA’s treasurer, in the current issue of By Design, the house organ.
To be sure, there’s a ton of work in the pipeline. Spending on golf renovations cratered in 2009 and hasn’t improved significantly since. At courses all over the nation, tees need to be leveled, bunkers need to be rebuilt, greens need to be regrassed, and irrigation systems need to be replaced. Course owners can’t delay making improvements forever.
“There is economic stabilization or some growth sparking optimism to begin the planning process,” said Rick Phelps, the ASGCA’s president. “People are saying, If there is six months of good news, we can go to [the] next level.”
Phelps indicates that the forthcoming work will mostly come from “that percentage of clubs and public courses which have stabilized bottom lines and are forward thinking -- maybe 30 percent or so. They are optimistic things will be good down the road and want to be ready with something new to bring people back.”
All this talk from the ASGCA is consistent with anecdotal evidence that I’ve gathered, based on my near-daily conversations with owners and managers of golf courses from coast to coast. People are feeling more confident, and more willing to write checks. Over the past few weeks, to cite just one example, I’ve unearthed planned renovations at a half-dozen golf properties in suburban Detroit, Michigan. This is particularly significant to me, because Michigan was among the first markets to fall as a result of the Great Recession, and arguably the one that fell the hardest.
“When you start seeing [renovations] happen in the area,” the general manager of a Detroit-area club told me, “the members [at other clubs] want to keep up with the Joneses.”
I hope the ASGCA’s optimism rests on a solid foundation. The construction end of the golf business can use some good news.
. . . talking points Irish Heartbeat
Jay Flemma, the lawyer and golf blogger, recently posted an interview with Jim Engh, a Colorado-based architect whose style has been inspired by some of the great golf courses in Ireland. Engh’s work includes some well-regarded U.S. courses set in memorable landscapes -– among them Fossil Trace Golf Club in Golden, Colorado and Awarii Dunes in Kearney, Nebraska -– and in recent years he’s been trying to finish a third nine at Carne Golf Club in County Mayo, Ireland.
Here’s part of Engh’s response to a question about his number-one goal as a course architect:
I have recognized over the years that I am in the entertainment business. My focus for any golf course is fun. Certainly that involves many issues when playing within the structure of a game with rules. However, when the game was invented, there was no “fair” and no “unfair.” There was simply the land provided by nature. The joy of the game included the emotional intrigue of challenging nature.
For me, the single most significant lesson has been to determine why I like what I like. I have been in love with playing golf in Ireland since my first visit in 1988, when I was working, in the early stages, on the new course at Portmarnock. I was absolutely smitten by the Irish golfing experience.
However, it was not long before I realized that it is not possible, in most situations, for projects in the U.S. to recreate the seaside landscape of Ireland. How was I going to recreate that wonderful golfing sensation that I so craved from Ireland? Certainly, I knew what I liked about the experience. But that did not solve the issue of how to recreate it. I needed to understand why I liked what I liked.
In May of 1999, while playing the first hole at Carne, I was smiling and looking this way and that way, walking down the fairway trying to absorb everything about this special place. It then occurred to me: I loved this experience because of the emotional feeling, the rush that I got simply from being within this setting. My brain was 100 percent turned on for the entire three hours that I was on the course. Endorphins were firing in my brain, and I was on a little high. I was intrigued, infatuated, and sometimes exasperated by trying to play the game of golf within this amazing setting. It was at that moment that I understood that I have to recreate the emotional feeling of Ireland, not necessarily landscape itself.
Somewhere along the way, the game has become more sterile. We have to some degree lost the open-mindedness of the origins of the game. Golf has in many ways become a game that is purely about the game. It encourages you to turn off your brain and hit the ball straight to the white flag with the perfect technique.
The best way for me to describe my design philosophy is to say that I try to design golf courses that are fun. Of course, finding ways to recapture that fun feeling from Ireland, within lands that are not Ireland, involves some creative design positions that some within the traditional world of golf consider to be strange, off the wall, unfair, or really wild. And that’s okay with me. After all, as long as my courses continue to be playable, with some out-of-the-box thinking at times, I will continue to inspire and provoke the creative emotions of those that play my courses.
Ultimately, what is more traditional than taking the game back to the mindset by which it was founded?
And in Other News . . .
. . . around the world The 10 most corrupt nations on earth, as ranked (from the bottom up) by Transparency International: Somalia, North Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Iraq, Haiti, and Venezuela. I lifted this list from TI’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, an exercise that aims to encourage the spread of better government by exposing levels of bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, and other shady practices. The least corrupt nation on the planet, TI says, is New Zealand, followed by a trio of Scandinavian nations – Denmark, Finland, Sweden – and Singapore. Here’s where some other popular golf-development destinations fall on the 182-nation scale: Canada is 10, the United Kingdom is 16, Cuba is 61, Brazil is 73, China is 75, Morocco is 80, India is 95, Mexico is 100, Vietnam is 112, and Russia is 143. If you’re wondering, the United States checks in at number 24, sandwiched between Qatar and France.
. . . wild card click There's no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.
The powers that be at the American Society of Golf Course Architects are feeling optimistic about the industry’s immediate business prospects.
Of course, they’ve lowered their expectations. Nobody at the ASGCA -- or anywhere else in golf, for that matter -- expects a substantive amount of new construction to begin anytime soon. That being said, however, the group expects existing U.S. golf properties to start spending money on upgrades in 2012.
“There are clearly more U.S. clubs talking about renovations, especially at the greens committee level,” said Rick Robbins, the ASGCA’s treasurer, in the current issue of By Design, the house organ.
To be sure, there’s a ton of work in the pipeline. Spending on golf renovations cratered in 2009 and hasn’t improved significantly since. At courses all over the nation, tees need to be leveled, bunkers need to be rebuilt, greens need to be regrassed, and irrigation systems need to be replaced. Course owners can’t delay making improvements forever.
“There is economic stabilization or some growth sparking optimism to begin the planning process,” said Rick Phelps, the ASGCA’s president. “People are saying, If there is six months of good news, we can go to [the] next level.”
Phelps indicates that the forthcoming work will mostly come from “that percentage of clubs and public courses which have stabilized bottom lines and are forward thinking -- maybe 30 percent or so. They are optimistic things will be good down the road and want to be ready with something new to bring people back.”
All this talk from the ASGCA is consistent with anecdotal evidence that I’ve gathered, based on my near-daily conversations with owners and managers of golf courses from coast to coast. People are feeling more confident, and more willing to write checks. Over the past few weeks, to cite just one example, I’ve unearthed planned renovations at a half-dozen golf properties in suburban Detroit, Michigan. This is particularly significant to me, because Michigan was among the first markets to fall as a result of the Great Recession, and arguably the one that fell the hardest.
“When you start seeing [renovations] happen in the area,” the general manager of a Detroit-area club told me, “the members [at other clubs] want to keep up with the Joneses.”
I hope the ASGCA’s optimism rests on a solid foundation. The construction end of the golf business can use some good news.
. . . talking points Irish Heartbeat
Jay Flemma, the lawyer and golf blogger, recently posted an interview with Jim Engh, a Colorado-based architect whose style has been inspired by some of the great golf courses in Ireland. Engh’s work includes some well-regarded U.S. courses set in memorable landscapes -– among them Fossil Trace Golf Club in Golden, Colorado and Awarii Dunes in Kearney, Nebraska -– and in recent years he’s been trying to finish a third nine at Carne Golf Club in County Mayo, Ireland.
Here’s part of Engh’s response to a question about his number-one goal as a course architect:
I have recognized over the years that I am in the entertainment business. My focus for any golf course is fun. Certainly that involves many issues when playing within the structure of a game with rules. However, when the game was invented, there was no “fair” and no “unfair.” There was simply the land provided by nature. The joy of the game included the emotional intrigue of challenging nature.
For me, the single most significant lesson has been to determine why I like what I like. I have been in love with playing golf in Ireland since my first visit in 1988, when I was working, in the early stages, on the new course at Portmarnock. I was absolutely smitten by the Irish golfing experience.
However, it was not long before I realized that it is not possible, in most situations, for projects in the U.S. to recreate the seaside landscape of Ireland. How was I going to recreate that wonderful golfing sensation that I so craved from Ireland? Certainly, I knew what I liked about the experience. But that did not solve the issue of how to recreate it. I needed to understand why I liked what I liked.
In May of 1999, while playing the first hole at Carne, I was smiling and looking this way and that way, walking down the fairway trying to absorb everything about this special place. It then occurred to me: I loved this experience because of the emotional feeling, the rush that I got simply from being within this setting. My brain was 100 percent turned on for the entire three hours that I was on the course. Endorphins were firing in my brain, and I was on a little high. I was intrigued, infatuated, and sometimes exasperated by trying to play the game of golf within this amazing setting. It was at that moment that I understood that I have to recreate the emotional feeling of Ireland, not necessarily landscape itself.
Somewhere along the way, the game has become more sterile. We have to some degree lost the open-mindedness of the origins of the game. Golf has in many ways become a game that is purely about the game. It encourages you to turn off your brain and hit the ball straight to the white flag with the perfect technique.
The best way for me to describe my design philosophy is to say that I try to design golf courses that are fun. Of course, finding ways to recapture that fun feeling from Ireland, within lands that are not Ireland, involves some creative design positions that some within the traditional world of golf consider to be strange, off the wall, unfair, or really wild. And that’s okay with me. After all, as long as my courses continue to be playable, with some out-of-the-box thinking at times, I will continue to inspire and provoke the creative emotions of those that play my courses.
Ultimately, what is more traditional than taking the game back to the mindset by which it was founded?
And in Other News . . .
. . . around the world The 10 most corrupt nations on earth, as ranked (from the bottom up) by Transparency International: Somalia, North Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Iraq, Haiti, and Venezuela. I lifted this list from TI’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, an exercise that aims to encourage the spread of better government by exposing levels of bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, and other shady practices. The least corrupt nation on the planet, TI says, is New Zealand, followed by a trio of Scandinavian nations – Denmark, Finland, Sweden – and Singapore. Here’s where some other popular golf-development destinations fall on the 182-nation scale: Canada is 10, the United Kingdom is 16, Cuba is 61, Brazil is 73, China is 75, Morocco is 80, India is 95, Mexico is 100, Vietnam is 112, and Russia is 143. If you’re wondering, the United States checks in at number 24, sandwiched between Qatar and France.
. . . wild card click There's no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
worth reading Smoke and Mirrors in Vietnam
I’ve been arguing for years that Vietnam’s future as a big-time golf destination isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, that the fundamentals of the nation’s golf business simply aren’t solid. Now, thanks to an article by James Hookway of the Wall Street Journal, I know I’m right.
Hookway writes that increasing numbers of wealthy Vietnamese now view golf-club memberships as an investment opportunity, the idea being that they’ll buy low today and cash out merrily tomorrow. And yes, it’s true that the value of golf-club memberships in Vietnam has been increasing of late. But as we all know so well here in the United States, past performance doesn’t necessarily guarantee future results.
Personally, I’m betting that the value of these investments will crash. There’s plenty of precedent. The market for golf memberships crashed in Japan, in Spain, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and everywhere else that the price of entry was artificially inflated by the newly rich. In the illusory world of phony privilege, what goes up must come down. It’s just a matter of time.
Here’s a condensed version of Hookway’s story:
With property prices sliding and the local stock market in free fall, some people [in Vietnam] are investing in golf club memberships in a last-ditch bid to protect their savings from being ravaged by soaring inflation and a fading currency.
Prices for club memberships around Hanoi have risen from around $6,000 in 2004 to roughly $30,000 now, with some of the plushest, complete with swimming pools, villas, and tennis courts, reaching $130,000. That’s not as expensive as top clubs in Japan or Singapore, but it is still a large slice of change in a country where the average income is around $1,200 a year.
“Buying a membership is better than putting cash in the bank, better than putting it in the stock market, and better than putting it into gold,” said Do Dinh Thuy, a 48-year-old management consultant, amid the steady thwack of balls being driven out onto a local range here in Hanoi’s suburbs. He recently bought a third membership, “and that one’s not for playing -- it’s for investment.”
At first, wealthy Vietnamese hedged against a sliding currency by investing in stocks and, after that market crashed, property. But now a speculative real estate bubble is popping, creating a fresh headache for the country’s new rich as they scramble to hold on to wealth. Hence the new swing to golf. . . .
What makes many Vietnamese think that golf club memberships are a one-way ticket to profit is their leaders’ disdain for the fairways -- and especially Communist Party bosses’ moves to limit new courses.
The supply shock began two years ago. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung froze plans to build scores of new golf courses across the country. Mr. Dung ruled that golf courses were gobbling up valuable farmland at a time when world food prices were spiking to record highs and many Vietnamese were struggling to find enough to eat. New golf course applications were placed under vigorous scrutiny. Many were turned down. . . .
More recently, Vietnamese officials have taken to banning activities which they feel harm the national interest. Over the past year, for instance, the government has banned lip-syncing to popular songs on television shows and ordered Internet service providers to shut off online video games between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. . . .
While the government’s crackdown might be making some golf club members richer, joining a club is a riskier investment than many Vietnamese might realize. The value of memberships in Japan crashed in the 1990s and has slumped elsewhere in Asia over the past decade as golf slowly lost some of its exclusive cachet. And playing the sport doesn't always require a pricey membership.
It is still possible to pay green fees to tee off at many Vietnamese clubs, and at least one bank has a deal whereby customers can deposit money and get free games at golf courses near the main cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Golf market experts here believe the government's abhorrence of the game makes club memberships as valuable as other things the authorities don't much like, such as gold and U.S. dollars, and could spare Vietnamese investors the bogey which others have hit.
“Golf memberships are a rare item; it will stay that way,” predicted Truong Thanh Huyen, a 27-year-old trader. She recently brokered the purchase of a membership in Nha Trang, southern Vietnam, for $19,000. “Now the open market value is up to $25,000,” Ms. Huyen bragged, checking the latest prices on her iPhone.
Back at the Hanoi driving range, Mr. Thuy agreed. “But you've got to get in fast,” he said. “That's one of the key principles of capitalism.”
Hookway writes that increasing numbers of wealthy Vietnamese now view golf-club memberships as an investment opportunity, the idea being that they’ll buy low today and cash out merrily tomorrow. And yes, it’s true that the value of golf-club memberships in Vietnam has been increasing of late. But as we all know so well here in the United States, past performance doesn’t necessarily guarantee future results.
Personally, I’m betting that the value of these investments will crash. There’s plenty of precedent. The market for golf memberships crashed in Japan, in Spain, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and everywhere else that the price of entry was artificially inflated by the newly rich. In the illusory world of phony privilege, what goes up must come down. It’s just a matter of time.
Here’s a condensed version of Hookway’s story:
With property prices sliding and the local stock market in free fall, some people [in Vietnam] are investing in golf club memberships in a last-ditch bid to protect their savings from being ravaged by soaring inflation and a fading currency.
Prices for club memberships around Hanoi have risen from around $6,000 in 2004 to roughly $30,000 now, with some of the plushest, complete with swimming pools, villas, and tennis courts, reaching $130,000. That’s not as expensive as top clubs in Japan or Singapore, but it is still a large slice of change in a country where the average income is around $1,200 a year.
“Buying a membership is better than putting cash in the bank, better than putting it in the stock market, and better than putting it into gold,” said Do Dinh Thuy, a 48-year-old management consultant, amid the steady thwack of balls being driven out onto a local range here in Hanoi’s suburbs. He recently bought a third membership, “and that one’s not for playing -- it’s for investment.”
At first, wealthy Vietnamese hedged against a sliding currency by investing in stocks and, after that market crashed, property. But now a speculative real estate bubble is popping, creating a fresh headache for the country’s new rich as they scramble to hold on to wealth. Hence the new swing to golf. . . .
What makes many Vietnamese think that golf club memberships are a one-way ticket to profit is their leaders’ disdain for the fairways -- and especially Communist Party bosses’ moves to limit new courses.
The supply shock began two years ago. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung froze plans to build scores of new golf courses across the country. Mr. Dung ruled that golf courses were gobbling up valuable farmland at a time when world food prices were spiking to record highs and many Vietnamese were struggling to find enough to eat. New golf course applications were placed under vigorous scrutiny. Many were turned down. . . .
More recently, Vietnamese officials have taken to banning activities which they feel harm the national interest. Over the past year, for instance, the government has banned lip-syncing to popular songs on television shows and ordered Internet service providers to shut off online video games between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. . . .
While the government’s crackdown might be making some golf club members richer, joining a club is a riskier investment than many Vietnamese might realize. The value of memberships in Japan crashed in the 1990s and has slumped elsewhere in Asia over the past decade as golf slowly lost some of its exclusive cachet. And playing the sport doesn't always require a pricey membership.
It is still possible to pay green fees to tee off at many Vietnamese clubs, and at least one bank has a deal whereby customers can deposit money and get free games at golf courses near the main cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Golf market experts here believe the government's abhorrence of the game makes club memberships as valuable as other things the authorities don't much like, such as gold and U.S. dollars, and could spare Vietnamese investors the bogey which others have hit.
“Golf memberships are a rare item; it will stay that way,” predicted Truong Thanh Huyen, a 27-year-old trader. She recently brokered the purchase of a membership in Nha Trang, southern Vietnam, for $19,000. “Now the open market value is up to $25,000,” Ms. Huyen bragged, checking the latest prices on her iPhone.
Back at the Hanoi driving range, Mr. Thuy agreed. “But you've got to get in fast,” he said. “That's one of the key principles of capitalism.”
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
brazil Prelude to a Dream Job?
Jack Nicklaus may not win the commission to design the golf course for the 2016 Olympics, but he’ll nonetheless soon make his mark on Brazil’s golf culture.
The North Palm Beach, Florida-based architect has been hired to produce an 18-hole “signature” golf course for SerrAzul Golf Club, in a northwestern suburb of Sao Paulo. The 7,000-yard layout will anchor Fazenda SerrAzul, an upscale, sports-oriented community that’s been designed, its developers say, for those who seek “quality of life associated with leisure, privacy, and security.”
Fazenda SerrAzul, a gated community with a 24-hour security force, is taking shape in a town called Itupeva. At build-out, it’ll consist of 361 single-family houses (and perhaps some condos), an equestrian center, sports centers for tennis and soccer, parks, lakes, and hiking trails.
The community is being developed by Terras de São José, a long-established home builder that describes itself as having “a rich history and a modern vision.” Terras de São José was spun off from a firm called SENPE, which got its start building roads and other large-scale engineering projects. The companies are responsible for some high-profile commercial landmarks in and around Itupeva, including a hotel, a major shopping mall, a theme park, and a water park.
Terras de São José hopes to break ground on the golf course next year.
The North Palm Beach, Florida-based architect has been hired to produce an 18-hole “signature” golf course for SerrAzul Golf Club, in a northwestern suburb of Sao Paulo. The 7,000-yard layout will anchor Fazenda SerrAzul, an upscale, sports-oriented community that’s been designed, its developers say, for those who seek “quality of life associated with leisure, privacy, and security.”
Fazenda SerrAzul, a gated community with a 24-hour security force, is taking shape in a town called Itupeva. At build-out, it’ll consist of 361 single-family houses (and perhaps some condos), an equestrian center, sports centers for tennis and soccer, parks, lakes, and hiking trails.
The community is being developed by Terras de São José, a long-established home builder that describes itself as having “a rich history and a modern vision.” Terras de São José was spun off from a firm called SENPE, which got its start building roads and other large-scale engineering projects. The companies are responsible for some high-profile commercial landmarks in and around Itupeva, including a hotel, a major shopping mall, a theme park, and a water park.
Terras de São José hopes to break ground on the golf course next year.
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