The 140-acre West Bloomfield Township, Mich. property includes 2,300 feet of lake frontage, a 20,000-sq. ft. clubhouse, 18-hole golf course, restaurant and banquet facility. The club continues to book banquets and events for 2021 and will not close or trade hands until the current owner honors those reservations.
The Bay Pointe Golf Club in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. has been listed for sale for $8.95 million, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. The 140-acre property includes about 2,300 feet of Middle Straits Lake frontage and a 20,000-sq. ft. clubhouse, 18-hole golf course, restaurant and banquet facility that can accommodate up to about 350 people.
Marketing materials from Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Friedman Real Estate, which has the listing, state about 41 acres of the property is water, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. Robert Hibbert, senior vice president of brokerage services for Friedman, said the Fuller family has owned the property for decades but isn’t closing it down any time soon, pending a sale.
“They are still booking banquets and events,” Hibbert said. “They are mostly full through 2021 and the owner will not allow the property to close or trade hands until they honor those reservations.”
Hibbert said the property would be ideally sold to either another golf course/banquet hall owner or operator; a developer looking to create a small residential enclave with only a handful of private lakefront estates; or a corporate user for use as a corporate retreat, Crain’s Detroit Business reported.
Bay Pointe opened in 1967 as a private club, designed by Ernie Fuller, with Gene Bone, a Michigan Golf Hall of Famer, serving as the first Head Golf Professional and staying on the job for 27 years, The Detroit News reported. The club opened to the public in 2006.
The listing comes about three months after equity members of Forest Lake Country Club in Bloomfield Hills rejected a sale of the 104-acre property to Pennsylvania-based homebuilder Toll Bros, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. C+RBreported on the “no” vote at the time.
The western Oakland County suburbs are familiar with golf courses being sold for redevelopment, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. The Commerce Township Downtown Development Authority bought the Links of Pinewood Golf Course and El Dorado Country Club in the early 2000s as part of a plan that ultimately became a roughly 330-acre chunk of land around M-5 and Pontiac Trail being redeveloped into a mix of uses.
In White Lake Township, the Bogie Lake Golf Club that closed in the early 2000s was converted into the The Hills of Bogie Lake subdivision, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. Elsewhere in the region, the Maple Lane Golf Club in Sterling Heights was sold to Auburn Hills-based homebuilder Moceri Cos. Also in Sterling Heights, the former Sunnybrook Golf & Bowling Inc. site was sold to Detroit-based Sterling Group and Farmington Hills-based design/build construction company J.B. Donaldson Co. for a new manufacturing development.
The Forest Lake and Bay Pointe sales explorations came as Michigan’s and the country’s golf industry undergoes a market correction following a nearly 20-year golf course building boom between 1986 and 2005, Crain’s Detroit Businessreported. By the turn of the century, Michigan had at least 1,000 courses. That number is down to around 750, according to the National Golf Foundation, and likely to fall further. The last significant course to be built in Michigan was the Loop at Forest Dunes Golf Club in 2016.
Despite a slow start for Michigan golf due to the COVID-19 shutdown and the initial ban on cart use, golf courses thrived this season, Crain’s Detroit Business reported. However, the banquet halls and restaurants that often make up half the revenue for the seasonal businesses are still suffering.
“Most courses experienced an increase of rounds up from 2019,” Jada Paisley, Executive Director of the Michigan Golf Course Association, said in an e-mail to Crain’s Detroit Business. “However, banquet business [weddings, meetings, etc.] for our courses was down anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent, resulting in an overall loss for the golf courses.”
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