Owners of the San Diego, Calif. property say the course is being closed primarily because of water rates that have doubled in less than ten years. The clubhouse will remain open for private and community events. The closing continues a trend that has seen seven San Diego County golf courses shuttered since 2013.
It was a difficult loss for Dan Thompson and his fellow men’s club members when the Carmel Highland Golf Course in Rancho Penasquitos, Calif. closed in March 2015, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
As they watched the facility on the west side of Interstate 15 die and become overgrown with weeds, the group of about 75 moved three miles east across the freeway to Carmel Mountain Ranch Country Club (CMR), the Union-Tribune reported.
They’ve been happy to have a home, but they’re about to have the grass ripped from underneath them again. Carmel Mountain Ranch General Manager Kevin Hwang, whose family has owned the course since 2008, confirmed for the Union-Tribune on June 19 that the course will close after the final putts drop on July 8.
“It’s frustrating. There’s sadness,” Thompson, who lives near the golf course and owns two other houses in the neighborhood, told the Union-Tribune. “When I first heard, it was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’
“They’re going to stop watering it; it’s not going to be maintained; and it’s going to become a blight on the community,” Thompson added.
In a statement to the Union-Tribune, Hwang, who declined to be interviewed, said, “We have come to know so many of our neighbors and are grateful for their friendship and patronage.
“Through the years, however, we have encountered significant challenges. As the only privately owned golf course in San Diego County to use 100 percent potable water, our golf course operation has been hit by water rates that have doubled in less than 10 years.
“While we have spent the last couple of years exploring every possible way to keep the course in operation, we have concluded that irrigating the property with more than 45 million gallons of drinking water each year is simply no longer sustainable.”
Hwang said the Carmel Mountain clubhouse will remain open for private and community events, the Union-Tribune reported.
The closing continues a trend that has seen seven San Diego County golf courses shuttered since 2013, the Union-Tribune reported. Five of them were public, and Carmel Mountain is the second daily-fee course this year to close, following the demise of Chula Vista’s Salt Creek Golf Club in March.
The full list, the Union-Tribune reported, includes Escondido Country Club (closed in April 2013), San Luis Rey Downs (August 2014), Carmel Highland (March 2015), Fallbrook (November 2016), StoneRidge (November 2017), in addition to Salt Creek and Carmel Mountain Ranch.
The loss of Carmel Mountain is notable on a couple of fronts, the Union-Tribune reported. The property was specifically built to accommodate as much housing as possible next to the course, with more than 670 homes built immediately on the perimeter. One hole alone—No. 8 is encircled by 70 houses. No other course closing in San Diego has directly impacted that many homes, the Union-Tribune reported.
Additionally, in 2014, Carmel Mountain received $4.4 million in public funds from the Metropolitan Water District’s turf-reduction program, the Union-Tribune reported. About half the course’s grass (approximately 54 acres) was removed and replaced with decomposed granite, redwood shavings and drought-resistant vegetation.
“To me, that’s taxpayer money that was totally wasted,” Thompson said.
After more than two months of being closed for its renovation, CMR reopened in early 2015, and JC Golf, which has operated the course for the last five years, said at the time that 40 million gallons of potable water per year would be saved, with the financial savings to the course estimated at $500,000 per year, the Union-Tribune reported..
However, since then, the price for water in the city of San Diego has continued to skyrocket, with scheduled increases of more than 33 percent from 2016-19. In 2015, the City Council approved rate increases that amounted to nearly 24 percent through 2017. A 2.16 bump will be instituted on August 1, and a 7 percent increase goes into effect in July 2019, the Union-Tribune reported.
It is not clear what the Hwang family plans to do with the land, stirring concern and speculation among homeowners who fear the course will become an unkempt wasteland, as has happened at other defunct courses, the Union-Tribune reported. They need only to look across the freeway at Carmel Highland, which remains forlorn and undeveloped three years after closing.
With 10,000 residents in densely populated Carmel Mountain, there is expected to be a significant outcry once the news circulates through the community, the Union-Tribune reported.
Eric Edelman, a realtor who owns a home on the golf course, is the chairman of the Camel Mountain Ranch/Sabre Springs Planning Group. The group currently is considered “inactive” by the city because there are seven members, including Kevin Hwang, on the Board, when at least 12 are required, the Union-Tribune reported.
“The city wanted us to disband a few months ago,” Edelman told the Union-Tribune. “I couldn’t get 12 people to come to a meeting, let alone sit on the Board.”
As word began to trickle out about the closing, Edelman said he received seven e-mails in 24 hours from people wanting to join the planning group. He told the Union-Tribune that he will work with the city to create a special election of Board members to expedite the group becoming active.
Edelman said he would expect a large, vocal gathering–“a real barn burner”—at the next meeting on July 11 at the Carmel Mountain Ranch Recreation Center. “I would call this the Big Kahuna of planning board issues,” he said.
As a resident and Realtor, Edelman told the Union-Tribune that he is firstly concerned with the course going fallow and affecting those who are buying and selling homes. He estimated that a golf course home gets a 3 percent to 5 percent boost in price. Currently, homes on the Carmel Mountain course are priced between $650,000 and $950,000.
In the long term, Edelman said the community will have to wrestle with what becomes of the golf course property, the Union-Tribune reported. The course is zoned as agricultural land, and any changes to the zoning would be considered by the community planning group, which would make recommendations to the City Council.
Development on at least some portions of the course seems inevitable, Edelman said. “There’s going to be a battle over that,” he said.
“This is very, very valuable real estate, so there’s bound to be interest in it,” he added. “I hope that any development can be done responsibly, with as little impact to the community as possible.”
The Hwang family is the most recent of a string of owners of Carmel Mountain, the Union-Tribune reported. The course was sold four times between 1993 and 2006, at prices ranging from $7 million to $8.3 million.
From its opening, the golf layout designed by Ron Freem got mixed reviews, the Union-Tribune reported. Golfers noted that CMR was a series of single holes and not a cohesive course. Others lauded the holes as interesting and challenging.
The course’s current approval rating on Golfnow.com is 80 percent, the Union-Tribune reported. Green fees for Southern California residents are $52 weekday/$72 weekends.
Jeff Woolson, Executive Vice President of CRBE, which specializes in golf course sales and acquisitions, worked on the first sale of Carmel Mountain in 1993. He told the Union-Tribune he isn’t surprised by its demise.
“When you look at its attributes, it’s not a great golf course,” Woolson said. “It’s tight and unfriendly, and there are balls hitting houses all of the time.”
Woolson, however, added that he has a hard time visualizing how the property can be developed. He noted that he saw designs before the course was built that envisioned a series of lakes, instead of golf.
“It’s a tight, tight space,” Woolson said. “Most of the fairways are double-loaded with homes, so I can’t imagine somebody being able to carve out any meaningful real estate.”
For the Union-Tribune’s full report, go to http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/sd-sp-carmel-mountain-ranch-country-club-closing-20180619-story.html
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