Carriage Hills News and Press

The demise of suburban golf courses is inevitable, said Al McMurchie, owner of McMurchie Golf Management and manager of Inver Wood Golf Course in Inver Grove Heights.

There's only one way to save them, he said. "In the long run, if municipalities don't develop golf courses, there are not going to be golf courses" in the metro area, said McMurchie.

But cities have money problems of their own. For them, buying a failing business that the private sector won't touch is hard to justify, especially when the new housing means new tax revenue.

Golf courses in danger, or already gone, include:

• Burnsville's 35-year-old Orchard Gardens golf course, sold to a developer last year. Work began on the site in August.

• Brockway Golf Course in Rosemount. Two weeks ago, the City Council approved a preliminary plan to turn it into a development including housing and stores.

• Carriage Hills in Eagan. For the second time in seven years, neighbors of the course are organizing to fight plans to turn the 18-hole course into a housing development.

• The 42-year-old Mendota Heights Par 3 Golf Course. A judge ruled in December that the city must change its zoning to allow the course to be used for housing.

• The Brighton Crossroads Driving Range, owned by New Brighton. It closed last fall, as part of a redevelopment plan.

"Those golf courses don't stand a chance," said John Shimpach, pro manager of the St. Paul-owned Como golf course, where business is down 9 percent from a 2000 peak. "There's an abundance of golf courses right now."

Turnbull said that 15 out of the more than 40 area golf courses would have to close to bring golf course profits to where they were in the mid-1990s.

GOLF IN THE ROUGH

If that happens, the ones to be eliminated will be a generation of private courses, many of which were built in the 1960s.

For them, the first signs of trouble came in the '90s, as a golf course building boom added 100 new courses in Minnesota — new competition for the older courses.

For a while, it looked like the growth in golfing would keep everyone happy, especially in Minnesota, known for its love of golfing.

"That was the thought: If you build a golf course, they will come," said Tom Ryan, director of the Minnesota Golf Association.

Then, two jets toppled the towers of the World Trade Center. Americans stopped flying as often, and the economy nose-dived. That, and years of bad weather, triggered three years of declines in golf in America.

The golfing business dropped just as the cost of housing skyrocketed — providing incentives to turn links into lots.

Old golf courses proved particularly tempting to developers because they offered large tracts of land already developed, with trees, grading and road access, according to Remi Stone, public policy director of the Builders Association of the Twin Cities.

And the competition is getting tougher. Last year, the Minnesota Golf Association added 10 new golf facilities to its membership, for an all-time high of 448. Eight of the 10 were outstate.

NEW WAYS TO COMPETE

Many newcomers have a key advantage. Although older courses depend entirely on golf for income, golf course communities are supported by the sale of lots for housing.

It's the housing, not any demand from golfers, that pushes the growth of many golf courses. As long as homebuyers are willing to pay more than $50,000 more for a lot on a golf course, income from golfers doesn't matter as much.

For example, at Troy Burne Golf Club in Hudson, Wis., golf course lots might sell for $150,000, while lots off the course would sell for perhaps $90,000, according to Todd Bjerstedt, president of Todd Allen Homes.

The metro area is overbuilt with courses, Bjerstedt said.

"The reality is that developers tend not to do their market research all the time. They see a beautiful piece of property and plow ahead, assuming it's going to go," said Bjerstedt. "If something is a fad, everyone jumps on it and ignores the demographics."

Experts say the new courses were planned prior to Sept. 11, 2001, when it looked as if golf would grow forever.

"Ask those courses in a couple of years how they are doing, if they are still open," Shimpach said.

The net effect of the new competition and housing prices has been lethal for older courses.

Last year, when the owner of the Orchard Gardens golf course in Burnsville wanted to retire, he found that his golfing business was only worth one-third of what he could get from a housing developer. He sold it, and the bulldozers started to roll.

LOSS OF GREEN SPACE

In Burnsville and elsewhere, neighbors say their protests aren't over the loss of golf as much as the loss of community prestige, quality of life and green space.

Rachael Thorpe Newman doesn't even golf, but in the 1990s she co-founded an organization to preserve Carriage Hills golf course in Eagan, across the street from her home. It worked — until a new plan surfaced last fall. Now, she has to do it again.

"Eagan does not need more townhouses and condos," she said. "We don't want to sound like a lynch mob. Of course the owner has a right to sell, but to whom?"

She called for officials to follow the city's comprehensive plan, keeping the area public, open space.

Developers see things differently.

"Whenever someone says you can't change the land next to my house, I say — tactfully — you should buy the land," said Bjerstedt.

Developers say golf course owners shouldn't be trapped in a money-losing business, and it's better to convert failing courses into much-needed housing and boost city tax rolls.

Turnbull and other experts say the demise of older suburban courses doesn't mean the decline of golf in general. It's a market correction, caused by a glut of courses and a temporary dip in interest in golf, they say.

Jeff Knutson, general counsel for the golf-course builder Rehbein Cos., said that golf's future is assured, partly because retiring Baby Boomers will bring waves of customers with money and time to the play the game.

"Golf has been around for hundreds of years," said Knutson, "and it will continue to be around."

But it won't be in Layman's back yard.

He remembers the misty mornings of summers past, when he and his son would walk down to the Orchard Gardens course as the sun rose. They would shoot nine holes as pheasants, fox and geese looked on.

"Now it is gone," he said.