Mike Keiser’s plans to build up to five golf courses between Wisconsin Rapids and Adams-Friendship has community leaders scrambling to improve infrastructure and amenities. This week, town officials from Rome, Wis., site of Sand Valley Golf Resort, are visiting Bandon, Ore., home to Keiser’s Bandon Dunes, to prepare for the inevitable growing pains that will come from the development.
Mike Keiser’s plans to build up to five golf courses on 1,700 acres between Wisconsin Rapids and Adams-Friendship, which has community leaders scrambling to improve infrastructure and amenities. For years, the region has used its sandy soil to grow potatoes, cranberries and pine trees for pulp for the paper industry. The golf development is adding to that economy, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
In addition, Keiser plans to restore an adjacent 7,200 acres for public use and bring it back to its natural state with jack pine, hill oak and prickly pear cactus that would improve the habitat for the endangered Karner blue butterfly and Kirtland’s warbler, the AP reported.
“The people of central Wisconsin do not have a sniff about how uniquely aware the rest of the country is about Sand Valley,” said Rick Bakovka, president of the Regional Economic Growth Initiative of Central Wisconsin. “It’s the biggest economic opportunity for our area in the last 50 years.”
And it’s all because of the sand. In the early 2000s, Craig Haltom, who was working for Madison-based Oliphant Golf Construction, began scouring the state looking for a unique site for a golf course development when he found a large tract of land in Adams County owned by a timber company. But when the financial markets began to sour in 2007, Oliphant went out of business and the plans were set aside but not forgotten, the AP reported.
Haltom ultimately connected with Keiser, who purchased the property in 2013 and has 160 founder investors who each ponied up $50,000 for the project. The first course, dubbed Sand Valley, designed by two-time Masters winner Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, will open its first full year of play next week, the AP reported.
The second course, Mammoth Dunes, designed by David McLay Kidd, will open in June for preview play, and a par-3 course is set to open in 2018. The property includes two 12-room lodges; four cottages, each with four rooms; a $6 million, 30,000-sq. ft. clubhouse and lounge with 17 guest rooms; and one of the largest private wastewater treatment facilities in the state, the AP reported.
Town of Rome, Wis., officials have estimated that the development, along with other housing and business projects nearby that could be created because of Sand Valley, could push the property value in the town from $750 million to over $1 billion by 2025 as investors tout the project and thousands of rounds of golf are played here each year. From last Labor Day through October, players came from 40 states and 10 countries for preview play on the Sand Valley course, the AP reported.
“This is more than just golf. This is a gateway to the rest of the world,” said Bakovka, a lifelong resident of the area. “The influx of people will lead to economic growth and parallel growth.”
Last fall, 9,000 rounds were played at Sand Valley and 20,000 rounds could be played this year on the development’s two courses, according to Sand Valley estimates. The number of rounds is expected to hit 40,000 in 2018, the AP reported.
Local officials are trying to get a grasp on what that growth can look like for the economy of central Wisconsin. The region has seen staggering job losses over the past 15 years in the paper industry and is trying to rebrand itself as a tourist destination. But there are concerns about a lack of accommodations, rental cars, restaurants and Alexander Field in Wisconsin Rapids. The city-owned airfield last fall had a steady stream of private planes and jets, the AP reported.
“In many ways we’re not prepared for it,” said Jeremy Sickler, the manger of the airport which is about a 20-minute drive from Sand Valley. “The types of services they need, the amount of space they need…that’s why we have long-range plans and some pretty significant funding requests in to the state.”
City officials have identified nearly $7 million in airport improvement projects that include additional taxiways, larger aprons, plane parking areas and more fuel storage. In September, fuel sales surged 300% at the airport, which has only a 10,000-gallon underground fuel tank. Some jets of the type the field figures to service can hold more than 5,000 gallons of fuel, the AP reported.
That’s why a contingent of local elected, administrative and economic development officials from the region are spending most of this week in Bandon, Ore., a seaside community of just over 3,000 people that is home to Bandon Dunes. Like Sand Valley, the golf mecca is fairly isolated, was developed by Keiser and includes courses designed by McLay Kidd and Crenshaw and Coore. The first of five courses at Bandon Dunes opened in 1999, the AP reported.
“It’s incumbent of the local community to really study and understand the impact so that we can be realistic about what those business opportunities and synergies might be,” said Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Zach Vruwink, 29. “What real growing pains will there be to achieve the support that they need to operate?”
Vruwink is pushing for more economic development to revitalize his city of about 18,000 people There are plans for a $10 million to $20 million downtown housing and commercial development and an $8.5 million regional outdoor aquatics center. Aspirus Riverview Hospital and Clinic announced plans last year for a $25 million upgrade. Sand Valley could help create more development opportunities for the city, the AP reported.
“For so long the faucet had been turned off,” Vruwink said. “We weren’t investing in our parks, we weren’t investing in quality-of-life amenities, we weren’t investing in community development projects.”
Something as simple as renting a car could be a challenge for golfers. Sonia Lewis and her husband own the only rental company in Wisconsin Rapids, which has 12 vehicles, usually rented by locals who are having a car repaired or going on a trip. The company’s four vans are often rented by church groups. “This summer could be an eye-opener, and we’re going to have to plan our next year off of this year,” Lewis said. “I don’t think (local residents) have a clue. They don’t understand what this could be for our area.”
The vast majority of lodging in the city consists of budget hotels and motels, except for the Hotel Mead & Conference Center with 150 rooms and 16,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. The city of Nekoosa has plans for a hotel and the town of Rome is working on a plan of its own for lodging, said Mike Miller, who was hired last year as the town’s first administrator, largely because of the Sand Valley project, the AP reported.
In 2015, prior to Miller’s arrival, the town successfully lobbied the Legislature to change state law to allow a town to create a tax incremental finance district. The town is now providing $12 million in TIF assistance to Sand Valley for development and habitat restoration efforts. The town is spending over $700,000 to convert Archer Avenue from a narrow dirt road to a wider, paved roadway leading to Sand Valley’s main entrance, the AP reported.
The town has formed its own tourism bureau and just completed a 4,600-sq. ft. addition to the town library. The town is home to the 334-acre Dyracuse Recreational Park for motorbikes and ATVs and the Wisconsin Trapshooters Association, which in 2012 broke ground on a 280-acre facility with 30 trap fields. Lake Arrowhead, a 2,500-acre, two-course golf and housing development established in 1975 lies just north of Sand Valley, the AP reported.
“Golf has always been a part of our community, but (Sand Valley officials) found an amazing natural resource and they’ve been able to develop this into something pretty spectacular,” Miller said. “It’s going to put the town of Rome and this region on the map.”
Sand Valley has been the focus of national golf publications and websites for the past few years. And with the U.S. Open coming in June to Erin Hills south of Hartford in Washington County, a steady stream of players and curiosity seekers are expected to converge on the Sand Valley property in the weeks before, during and after the prestigious tournament, the AP reported.
“Central Wisconsin is set to boom as the Midwest’s next hot golf destination,” Golf Advisor wrote last month. “A buddies trip can make base camp at Sand Valley, which, as crazy as it might sound, is centrally located within an hour’s drive of SentryWorld, Wild Rock, Trappers Turn and the 36-hole Lawsonia.”
Overall, the development will employ more than 300 people this year. That includes 20 interns from UW-Stout, Purdue and Penn State, but the vast majority of the employees come from the area, said General Manager Glen Murray, the AP reported.
“Sand is the secret ingredient,” said Murray. “Other courses will truck in millions of dollars of sand to build a comparable course, and we have it right here. Plus, then, the drama of the ridges and valleys out here add to the aesthetics. The sunsets out here are something people are really going to remember.”
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