Posted on 01/13/2019 6:34:45 AM PST by dennisw
When Mitch Steller first moved into his house on a lush 117-acre golf course in Southern California, “this was like the Garden of Eden, having a golf course in my backyard,” he said.
Today, his Poway, Calif., home overlooks dry, dead grass in place of a once-verdant fairway. The golf club closed in 2017. “The fairways are brown, the greens are gone, the buildings are being vandalized,” says Mr. Steller, a 70-year-old maritime-management consultant.
Forty years after developers started blanketing the Sunbelt with housing developments built around golf, many courses are closing amid a decline in golf participation, leaving homeowners to grapple with the consequences. People often believe a course will bolster their property values. But many are discovering the opposite can now be true—and legal disputes are erupting as communities fight over how to handle the struggling courses.
“There are hundreds of other communities in this situation, and they’re trapped and they don’t know what to do,” says Peter Nanula, chief executive of Concert Golf Partners, a golf club owner-operator that owns about 20 private clubs across the U.S. One of his current projects is the rehabilitation of a recently acquired club in Florida that had shut one of its three golf courses and sued residents who had stopped paying membership fees.
(Excerpt) Read more at outline.com ...
People urinated for millions of years. At last check, it is part of human anatomy.
In Europe, people went naked in city parks, young and old. Guess what? Nobody cared.
Not every culture plays golf. Maas import them at your own risk. Oops...
Golf and Republicans seem to me to go together certainly the wealthy and golf match ... drive both out and replace with illegals while making water a sacred commodity and the recipe for vacant courses is baked in.
At my place, the golf course is completely separate from the condos. It has been that way since the beginning, back in 1972. If you are a condo owner, you can join at a discount, but most of the members don’t live here.
We get along with the course OK. There are some complaints about broken windows, but the maintenance guys are willing to help you if it’s a problem. So far, the course has enough members to stay in business, although they have to advertise and compete for members.
https://www.flyingmag.com/marlboro-airport-closing
I was thinking a homeless camp.
I know the Stoneridge CC as our family had a non golf membership 30 years ago. I am also a realtor. I feel the danger here is that HUD may come in and order low income housing on the site because Poway has very few units. Saying no to the butterfly far, can you believe that story/, will open the property in Section 8 units. Which devil do you want in your back yard?
I’ve seen it twice. Once, a guy lost ownership of a golf course to his now ex-wife, who in bitterness shut the golf course and refused to do any maintenance. Property values plummeted. More recently, a subdivision built around a golf course got in legal trouble because a kid wandered on to the golf course at night and drowned. What were the parents doing? Well...not much, but they sued the golf course. After 60 years, it went bankrupt. Without water, the trees died and now the place is slowly reverting to nature. SLOWLY.
Not a fan of golf courses myself, but most folks buying a house don’t ask themselves what will happen if the golf course goes out of business.
“that show Longmire set in a back woods county of Wyoming”
And filmed in New Mexico, IIRC.
Don’t buy one if you can’t afford it - there are going to be capital calls as long as you own it, and you have to vote yes. The $$ number to join in the first place should give anyone an idea on what its going to be like moving forward.
The Honda Classic used to be held at Heron Bay before it moved to the Bear Trap at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, in the very same town. The homeowners stopped voting yes on recommended improvements, it became outdated, they lost the Honda tournament and now the course is a goat track. And some gorgeous, really nice Florida style homes are unmarketable.
Bottom line is don’t vote no on any improvements initiatives, assuming your Board has done a good planning job. Keep your course nice and your home valuable. There’s always a market for nice stuff - a gated community with a trim golf course and tennis and exercise and restaurants and watering holes qualifies as nice stuff to me. You’ll lose far more in value by voting no than you’ll lose in cash voting yes. If you can’t afford it, sell it before you lose your value.
OMT, the new developments in Palm Beach County don’t have golf anymore. You can go at any price level you want, any age that you want. I don’t care or know anything about California, just Florida.
“Does this mean public courses are now even more crowded then ever? I haven’t golfed in 20 years, but would like to get back into it now that I’m retired....”
I played golf for many years and was pretty good at it. Then one day I paid over 100 bucks to play a round and thought, “Why am I paying so much money to play a game where I’m trying to take the least amount of shots?”
Haven’t played in 11 years.
Thought you should know, the word golf comes from a Scottish word, “kolf” meaning club or mallet used as early as the 1400s. “Put” means hole. Incidentally, in 1425 women were not even considered relevant, let alone ladies, their main purpose was to produce male heirs.
Quail and pheasant . . . Yeah, possibilities.
And a shooting range.
Those first, then some govt can add low cost housing or a homeless camp if they want.
We live on a small airport with a bunch of perpendicular taxiways on one side of the runway. That side especially reminds me a bit of one of these golf course communities.
About 20 years ago I heard two days ahead of a hearing that the nearby small town was planning on annexing the airport. Everyone said that it was a “done deal”. This made a lot of red flags go off in my head. In the case of a small town near a small airport this type of action typically spells the end of the airport.
I was able to get time off from work and made up a flyer. I took it around to every one of the 116 houses on the airport. I talked to someone at every house over the two days I had available before the hearing.
This resulted in a huge angry and vocal crowd showing up at the hearing. It truly was a circus that the city of Covington had no clue was going to take place. After an hour of one angry homeowner after another getting up to speak, the mayor finally asked if there was anyone present who wanted to be annexed by the City of Covington.
There were three, the presidents of the two home owner associations from housing developments nearby said that their neighborhoods wanted better police and fire protection and they thought that the annexation would help. The pièce de résistance was the 3rd speaker. He was from the developer who wanted to turn the entire valley next to the airport into low income section eight (government subsidized) apartments.
He had become very angry during what was suppose to be a "cakewalk" and he started calling us all a bunch of NIMBY’s (not in my back yard people) who hated low income people and progress. No one outside of the city's planning department had any idea of the real plan. None of us realized that they had already been buying up chunks of acreage for low prices in preparation for the annexation. Once this guy let the cat our of the bag even the presidents of the nearby homeowner’s associations reversed their positions.
The small city was being “required” (according to them) to add a bunch of low income, high density housing by the county and state. Instead of using eminent domain to throw a bunch of people out of their houses in the city to make room, they decided it would be much better to annex our area and put the projects and low income residents out where they wouldn't cause so much trouble.
In the 20 years since, Covington has turned into a mess of stores and low income apartments with a high percentage of the new residents being Muslims and other non-English speaking new arrivals. It is starting to look like "Hill Valley" after Biff got his hands on the sports almanac in Back to the Future Part II.
The Fred Meyers store that was the very best in the state 20 years ago has so much shoplifting now that when I was in the store talking to clerks a couple weeks ago... they just ignored it when minority teenagers were running out with bottles of booze under their arms. The door alarm went off and I asked if they needed to do anything about it. They said that no, it will go back off again automatically and it was against store policy to chase after them. I asked if they were going to call the police and they said that no, it happens so often that the police didn't like to be called.
So anyway back to your original point. You can really make a difference if you make contact with others. I do not think that even in this day of cell phones, the internet, and other forms of communication that there is a true substitute for face to face communication.
Nice, Mr Carlin..
..
BTW, I hunt/shoot, ride ATV's, work with my tractor AND GOLF.. Why does any one have to be exclusive of another?
Why do some feel the need to make a petty wise crack if it's something they themselves don't do?
Sounds like a buncha aged adolescents and leftists. Get a life, chilluns.. Hehehe. d;^)
Great story and it shows how personal action makes all the difference.
Then they can crap in the roads and improve it even more!!
““There are hundreds of other communities in this situation, and they’re trapped and they don’t know what to do,” says Peter Nanula, chief executive of Concert Golf Partners, a golf club owner-operator that owns about 20 private clubs across the U.S. One of his current projects is the rehabilitation of a recently acquired club in Florida that had shut one of its three golf courses and sued residents who had stopped paying membership fees.”
This is happening all over California where people moved into an active retirement community with a golf course and/or tennis courts as a center of activity.
The active golfers/tennis players are dying off as old age takes them. The newer home owners are often not into golf or tennis and into taking local day trips for their lifestyle.
There was a beautiful 9 hole golf course SE of of the city of Sonoma, and they closed it during one of the droughts about a decade ago. There were a few private communities just north of it. They are still there but many of the golfers still alive have moved out.
East of Santa Rosa, there is what used to be a model retirement community, Oakmont. Now, there are battles going 24/7 on between the golfers/tennis players still alive, and the new retirees, who do different things in their active retirement.
Mandatory dues and other monthly/yearly dues can be well over $1,000/$2,000+ per month in many of these places. The newer residents are saying hell no. Maybe,the days of elite liberal golfers getting others to pay for their fun on the courses are over.
I have loved golf since I took it up when I was 11 years old. When I moved to north Florida and bought a home on the golf course some 45 years ago, it was like a dream come true. Arthritis has taken its’ toll and I can no longer play, but I still sit out on my porch and watch the golfers go by.
Most of the golfers I watch going by are seniors. Young people are just not taking up the game. They would rather sit on the couch playing with their devices. Our club is struggling to stay afloat. I’m afraid that I may one day end up with a pasture behind my home.
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