CHICAGO—On August 28, The Oak Club of Genoa, an 18-hole golf course in DeKalb County just northwest of Chicago, will go up for auction online, and even though many courses throughout the metropolitan area have started losing money, Diana Peterson expects to find a buyer. “We anticipate it being under contract in the next couple of days,” says the executive vice president of Auctions by ATG, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Attorneys' Title Guaranty Fund, Inc. The firm has been in business since early 2012 and periodically conducts online auctions, although many of the potential buyers attend in person at the company's downtown office.
“We do a lot of targeted pre-auction marketing and we did a lot of outreach to people who have an interest” in the Oak Club, Peterson says. “Most of these courses are built on land that's not suitable for agriculture,” and she believes the eventual buyers will be local investors who want to hang onto the club, located on 157 acres at 11770 Elwood Greens Rd. in Kingston. The auction will start with a minimum bid of $595,000.
Auctions by ATG recently helped sell at auction, for a similar price, the Blackhawk Run Golf Course in Stockton, IL, near Galena and the Mississippi River. The cheap prices reflect an industry that has fallen on hard times. “I think it's just the specter of the economy,” Peterson says. “Golfing is a luxury; and belonging to gold club, it's the first thing to go.”
“Part of it was the economy, but partly it was a demographic shift,” said Chris Charnas, principal at the Evanston-based Links Capital Advisors, Inc., a broker that specializes in golf courses. He recently completed the sale of the Woods Golf Club in Green Bay and the Silver Spring Golf and Banquet Center in Menomonee Falls, among others. “No one has as much time to spend at country clubs.” Even if the economy recovers, younger fathers spend more time providing childcare or coaching soccer than they used to, making it difficult for clubs to attract the next generation of players. “They're going to have to downsize; there's going to have to be fewer clubs.”
Still, the sale of Blackhawk and the pre-auction interest in the Oak Club shows that Auctions by ATG can find buyers for these properties. “It's all the targeted marketing we do that results in the pre-auction bidding,” Peterson says. This will be their 8th auction, and a total of eight properties will go up for final auction on the 28th. And although the serious bidders tend to show up at the office on auction day, the internet remains a useful tool. “The auction world has changed radically in the last five years; it's necessary to be online if you want to compete.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
