Deal Would Build Apartment Complex at Deer Creek GC in Return for $5M in Improvements

Through a joint venture with GreatLife KC, which owns the Overland Park, Kan. club, the EPC Real Estate Group LLC would build approximately 225 high-end apartments across three buildings. The $60 million project would impact 10.8 acres or about 7 percent of the golf course’s overall ground, touching the 1^st and 10^th holes and changing the first from a par-4 to a par-3. In return, the developer would put $5 million into stabilizing the creek that runs through the golf course and has been subject to frequent flooding, while also making other course improvements and building a new pro shop and clubhouse.

Through a joint venture with golf course owner GreatLife KC, EPC Real Estate Group LLC is looking to build approximately 225 high-end apartments across three buildings, as well as a new pro shop and clubhouse on portions of the Deer Creek Golf Club in Overland Park, Kan., the Kansas City Business Journal reported.

The $60 million project would impact 10.8 acres, or about 7 percent of the golf course’s overall ground, touching its first and tenth holes and changing the first hole from a par-4 to a par-3, Austin Bradley, EPC’s Vice President of Development, told the Business Journal.

As part of the arrangement, the developer proposes a $5 million capital investment into the club, to include stabilization of Tomahawk Creek, which runs through the Deer Creek golf course, plus repairs to bunkers, tee boxes, fairways, greens and vegetation, the Business Journal reported.

Nearby development has significantly increased upstream water runoff, meaning that storms will cause flooding issues that erode creek banks, drag debris onto the course and result in closures for staff to complete repairs, Bradley said.

“The frequency of those events has become so severe over the years that it’s not sustainable to continue to incur that kind of damage and operate a profitable course,” he told the Business Journal.

EPC’s goal “first and foremost” is to save the golf course, while also meeting what he described as a continuing need for more housing in Overland Park, Bradley added.

EPC’s proposal comes as developers in and beyond the Kansas City area have eyed golf courses as appetizing redevelopment sites, the Business Journal noted.

In Overland Park, Curtin Property Co. was approved to build a $2 billion development with a mix of uses at the former Brookridge Golf & Fitness property. Elsewhere in the metro area, former golf courses have supported mixed-use and park land in Prairie Village and industrial development in Belton.

EPC is not threatening that the Deer Creek Golf Club will close if its project is not approved, Bradley told the Business Journal. “What we are saying is that this project contemplated here and today does save the golf course and ensure the viability of it for the near term—I can’t stress that enough,” he said.

A total of 450 parking spaces would serve the development—280 surface stalls, largely for golf patrons, and 170 garage stalls underneath two of the multi-family buildings, the Business Journal reported.

EPC is scheduled to host a neighborhood meeting at the Deer Creek clubhouse on July 27th to provide more information about its proposal, the Business Journal reported. The city’s Planning Commission could then review a multi-family rezoning request and special-use permit for the development at its meeting on August 9th.