MEQUON, WI-In another distressed asset trend, local investor Tom Weickardt has purchased the Mequon Country Club here for $1.5 million. Links Capital Advisors Inc., assisted by Siegel-Gallagher Inc., represented the seller, an East Coast lender that had taken over the property.
The site is a former 27-hole championship golf course and private country club at 2400 N. Ville Du Parc Dr. The new owner is renovating the property, such as adding 15,000 square feet to the 44,000-square-foot clubhouse, and renaming the site as the River Club of Mequon. Weickardt said in a statement that his goal will be to create “an active four-season vibe” in the spring, with plans later in the year for a potential skating rink, winter sports trails and two golf simulators.
Chris Charnas, president of Evanston, IL-based Links, tells GlobeSt.com that sales of distressed golf courses should increase in 2012. Prices are at an all-time low, creating a unique buying opportunity for buyers with access to capital, he says.
“In the 1990s, we had the National Golf Course Owners Association saying that there was so much demand that we could open a golf course a day for the next 15 years, and the industry proliferated with builders, architects and golf communities,” Charnas says. “Starting around 2000, rounds started getting fewer. We were overbuilt in every market.”
It didn’t help that club memberships have also dropped considerably, partly due to the recession and also partly due to demographic shift, he says. “Guys in their 30s and 40s used to join private clubs, they’re off doing other things now,” Charnas says. “There used to be waiting lists for the solid institutions, those are gone, it’s getting so that they can’t even keep up membership enough to pay the bills.”
There’s no good news in sight for the areas that are too saturated with courses, he says, such as Florida, Arizona and northern Michigan. “Of the roughly 16,000 courses in the United States, there’s probably just too many,” Charnas says. “The problem is, it’s just not easy to redevelop these properties. You’re talking about 150 to 200 acres of land that in today’s housing market just can’t be converted into residential. With no ways to save them, a lot of courses are getting taken over by banks.”
With many of the courses built in the past 15 years as residential communities, it’s not likely the sites will be turned over to other types of property. Charnas says there are initiatives ongoing to get more young people in to golf. “Everyone is hoping we can birth our way out of this,” he says.
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