The Southern California property that includes an 18-hole golf course and country club has been listed for sale off and on for more than 10 years by the construction company that owns it, but then taken off the market after generating disappointing bids. But the owners may now accept a price of just under $3 million, in a deal that would close by June.
The on-again, off-again sale of the nearly 1,000-acre Borrego Springs (Calif.) Resort is on again as the longtime owner awaits the close of escrow, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The resort property includes an 18-hole golf course and a two-story, 100-room hotel and country club, which has a restaurant, bar and lounge. Other amenities include two swimming pools, a spa and several tennis courts.
An online auction in March yielded a winning bid of $2.95 million, with the close of escrow expected no later than June 10, Jim Moxham, CEO of Santee, Calif.-based Cameron Brothers Construction, which owns the property, told The Union-Tribune.
Moxham said he could not reveal the identity of the buyer because of confidentiality agreements. The winning bid, though, is far less than what was sought in previous sales, The Union-Tribune reported, with one asking price soaring as high as $23.5 million in 2005 before the resort was taken off the market.
Previous efforts to sell the resort and undeveloped land were unsuccessful largely because interested buyers were unable to come up with as much as $100 million in equity needed to build out the acreage with homes, Moxham explained to The Union-Tribune. Moxham said he does not know if the current prospective buyer has that same interest in developing the land.
“Some of our prior sales [attempts] were at values that were two to three times the current sales price, and those buyers were interested in developing the property with 800 to 900 homes,” Moxham said.
Of the property’s roughly 1,000 acres, 635 are set aside for future homes, The Union-Tribune reported
Since the death of the Cameron Brothers founders, whose interest was more in building out the property, the company decided it made sense to sell the resort, Moxham told The Union-Tribune.
Of the more than 800 potential home sites, about 80 finished lots are ready for development and 200 additional parcels have been roughly graded, Moxham said.
Cameron Brothers has owned the resort since the early 1990s and built the hotel in 1997, The Union-Tribune reported. It was last renovated in 2009, according to Moxham. Nightly rates range from $139 to $259.
A completed sale of the resort could portend more change for the Borrego Springs area, which sits in the middle of the 1,100-sq.-mile Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and has about 3,200 full-time residents. The area has been enjoying something of a resurgence since the recession, especially for hospitality-related properties, The Union-Tribune reported.
La Casa del Zorro, which remains Borrego Springs’ most upscale resort, reopened in 2013 following a sale of the 42-acre property for $2.4 million and more than $1 million in improvements.
Rams Hills Golf Course, which closed in 2011, has reopened and was recently named the best new golf course in the U.S. by World’s Best Golf Destinations
“The Borrego Springs Resort is very important to our local economy because it is a full-service resort and our largest,” Linda Haddock, Executive Director of the Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, told The Union-Tribune.
“We do want to see more development out there, but that will have to be balanced with all the environmental considerations, including water,” Haddock added. “But we do need more housing in Borrego Springs.”
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.