The new owners who purchased the shuttered property in Richland Township, Mich. last fall and announced plans for a “no frills” private approach said they fell far short of securing enough membership commitments by a March 15 deadline. So course maintenance equipment, golf carts, tools and other physical assets will now be sold at auction on April 25.
Despite an attempt at reinvention, the shuttered Maple Hill Golf Course in Richland Township, Mich. will not reopen, MichiganLive.com reported.
As C&RB reported in December (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2014/12/16/maple-hill-gc-streamlines-focus-golf/), after financial hardship caused the golf course near Hemlock, Mich., in Saginaw County, to close last fall, Jim Kruszynski and Gregg Matekel purchased it with plans to reopen it this spring as the Maple Hill Club.
“Instead of doing what everybody else is trying to do out there with golf courses, we’re going to try to be completely unique,” Kruszynski told MichiganLive.com at that time. “We’re offering a private golf club with no frills, so we’re not trying to be like a country club.”
The plan was for an operation that would be run with nine employees, but without a golf pro, club storage, restaurant or bar. Members would be able to bring their own food and drink, and the pro shop would offer only balls, tees and gloves for sale. Outings would not be hosed and no public play would be allowed; guests would only be allowed to play with members, and only up to four times a year.
New membership costs were set at these levels:
- Junior family (ages 30 and younger), $900
- Intermediate family (ages 31 to 35), $1,300
- Family (ages 36 to 69), $2,200
- Single (ages 36 to 69), $1,900
- Senior family (ages 70 and older), $1,800
The economics of such a plan meant that the new owners would need to secure 200 members, MichiganLive.com reported. But after a surge of initial interest, the March 15 deadline that the new owners had set arrived with commitments that fell far short of that break-even number.
“The first meeting, we had 50-some people show up and the momentum was there,” Kruszynski told MichiganLive.com. “[But then] all of a sudden, everybody had the wait-and-see attitude, and that just doesn’t work when you’re opening a business.”
And some former members took their dollars elsewhere, he added.
“There was a whole group that went to another course; that could have been the deciding difference,” Kruszynski said.
The March 15 deadline had to be firm, MichiganLive.com reported, because the new owners needed to let Grounds Superintendent Chris Ballosh know whether he would have a job there.
“We even lowered our goal to 140 members just to try to make it work and we only got 67,” Matekel told MichiganLive.com. “It was sad. We had put a lot of effort into it, and it just wasn’t going to work.
“To open that course is close to $400,000,” he added, “and we were just at a little over $100,000 in revenue.”
Now that Maple Hill is officially closed, an equipment liquidation sale is planned for April 25, MichiganLive.com reported.
“I was notified by the owners to liquidate the course simply based on the fact that they couldn’t operate it with too few members,” said Marty Wegner, owner of Freeland, Mich.-based Wegner Auctioneers. “So we are going to have an auction on the 25th at 10 a.m., to sell all the maintenance equipment, golf carts, tools, that type of thing.”
The auction is scheduled to take place at Maple Hill GC, with inspection and absentee bidding scheduled for 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 22, or by appointment with the auctioneer, MichiganLive.com reported. The auction is free to attend and open to the public, and a list of items for sale and auction rules can be viewed at http://www.wegnerauctioneers.com/maple-hill-golf-club-auction-425.html
Matekel told MichiganLive.com that he and Kruszynski worked hard to get the word out about their plans for reviving Maple Hill and to attract members, but blamed the need to close it on waning interest in the sport.
“Golf is declining across the country and especially here,” Matekel said. “The majority of our members were senior members, over the age of 70. That says a lot for five, 10 years down the road.”
Matekel said he and Kruszynski don’t know what’s next, but they do not intend to sell the property.
“We have no plan. We just want to liquidate what we can here, try to get as much as we can back, and, after that, we have no plan at all,” he said.
They did take time to thank those who did sign up. “We greatly appreciate the 67 members that tried to make this thing stay alive,” Matekel said.
Kruszynski also operates the Bay City (Mich.) Country Club with his wife Wendy Dore, MichiganLive.com reported. C&RB reported on their plans to rebrand that club and take it public earlier this year (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2015/02/02/bay-city-mich-cc-goes-public-117-years-changes-name/)
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