Andover Golf and Country Club in Lexington, Ky. was set to be auctioned on Monday, April 24, and Pulaski (Va.) Country Club will be sold at a foreclosure auction in May. Neighborhood groups and their developers are attempting to stop the bank from “ramming through” the Andover sale and there are questions about whether the property, which is in a protected flood plain, can exist for any other purpose. Pulaski CC is a case of “a matter of debt at the wrong time to build some terrific facilities,” says a source organizing the auction.
Andover Golf and Country Club in Lexington, Ky., which shut down earlier this year due to financial troubles (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2017/02/andover-golf-cc-closes-bank-talks-potential-new-owners/), was set to be auctioned on Monday, April 24, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Because residents in surrounding neighborhoods are concerned about what might come of the property, Ball Homes and Lochmere Development Corp. have tried to cancel the sale sought by Whitaker Bank, according to court records, the Herald-Leader reported.
The developers have accused the bank of trying to “ram” through a foreclosure and sale in less than 60 days and have maintained that they should have the first opportunity to buy the property before it is put up for auction.
The property has been appraised at $2.4 million, and Whitaker Bank is attempting to raise $3.2 million, according to the master commissioner’s website of Kentucky’s Fayette Circuit Court that has listed the club as one of 34 sales to be auctioned starting at noon on April 24, the Herald-Leader reported.
“What I’ve been told is that they are thinking about developing the country club as something other than a golf course,” William Von Brandenburg, Vice President of one of the neighborhood groups opposing the sale, told Lex 18, Lexington’s NBC television station. “If it’s subdivided for more homes or apartments or something, it will have a negative impact on property values.”
His biggest concern, Von Brandenburg added, would be environmental factors if the course was developed into homes. “A golf course is a lot of green space [that] soaks up a lot of rain,” he said. “When you have all these homes developed, if that happens, now you’ve got a lot of runoff.”
Some people who live near the course, but didn’t want to go on camera, told LEX 18 they doubted Andover G&CC could be developed into anything but a golf course, because it’s in a flood plain, and some homeowners have it written in their deeds that it will remain a golf course.
Shannon Foster, an agent with local realtor Rector Hayden, told WKYT, Lexington’s CBS station, that many homeowners are attracted to the perks of a golf course community, even if they don’t play golf.
“It offers great views [and] amenities they may not normally have,” said Foster, “If they live actually on a fairway, or on a green, they don’t have backdoor neighbors, so to speak.
“I would suspect that it would be a little bit more difficult to sell [homes] at this time just because, with the uncertainty of who is going to purchase the [Andover G&CC] property and what their intentions are, there is going to be some hesitation if they really want to purchase,” Foster added.
Jennifer Scutchfield, who serves as a local Councilwoman and lives in the Andover community, told WKYT that “There is obviously concern in the neighborhood.”
“People bought their homes here because it was a golf course community. It was green space,” said Scutchfield.
The possibility of a new owner building on the green space is concerning for many, Scutchfield added. “There is a concern that the development could occur, and we bought our house without that in mind,” she said.
“The foreclosure, or the Master Commissioner’s sale, really is just one of the steps, so we won’t have any answers [until later],” Scutchfield added.
The Roanoke Times reported that the Pulaski (Va.) Country Club will be sold at a foreclosure auction in May, casting uncertainty over an institution that has been in the community for more than 90 years.
Club Treasurer Bob Adkins said on April 20 that he remembers the heyday of the 1970s, when the golf course had well over 350 members, many of them lawyers, executives with Pulaski Furniture Corp., and owners of car dealerships like himself.
“You just don’t have that anymore,” Adkins told the Times.
Pulaski County’s economy is now propped up by out-of-town manufacturing giants, such as Sweden-based Volvo Trucks and Colombia’s Phoenix Packaging, the Times noted.
Between those demographic changes and new competition from other golf courses, Adkins said, it’s been a struggle for Pulaski CC. Membership at the club, long privately owned before entering foreclosure proceedings, is now about 125, less than half of what it once boasted, the Times reported.
The club and its 18-hole golf course are still open, and Adkins hoped it would stay that way after the auction, which is set for 12:30 p.m. on May 17, the Times reported.
But there were no guarantees with the auction approaching for an “everything will go” sale that will include 146 acres of land along U.S. 11, along with everything from tennis courts to mowers, cooking equipment and leaf blowers, the Times reported.
The club’s 7,786-sq.-ft. clubhouse was built in 2001 and features a pro shop, restaurant, banquet hall, locker rooms and pool, the Times reported. The club’s struggles are tied to 1999, when a stove inside the clubhouse kitchen caught fire and destroyed its original 1920s-era building.
The club’s Board of Directors then decided to rebuild with a $1 million loan in the early 2000s, the Times reported. But that was about the same time that Pulaski County’s demographics took a turn and competition with other nearby golf courses heated up, and the loan to build the new clubhouse was never repaid.
While the club’s Board members have spent the past couple of years helping the business limp along with loans from their personal checking accounts, the foreclosure was inevitable, Adkins told the Times. “You can only go to that well so many times,” he said.
The property is valued at $2.2 million for tax purposes, according to Micah Torrence, who is organizing the sale through Forest, Va.-based Torrence, Read & Forehand Auctions. But there’s no telling what the winning bidder will be willing to pay, Torrence told the Times.
The auction will be held inside the clubhouse, the Times reported, and bids can be submitted in person, remotely by phone, or online.
Adkins said the club is currently about $1 million in debt, and the proceeds of the sale will be used to pay back the bank, with whatever is left over to be distributed among the business’ roughly 6,500 shareholders.
“That’s optimistic, but that’s the plan,” Adkins told the Times.
The club’s Board has been cooperative with the foreclosure proceedings ever since the owners realized there was no other way around the debt, Torrence said. While he’s seen a lot of these kinds of businesses crumble recently, it’s often because of lower-quality amenities, he told the Times.
“That’s not the case [for Pulaski CC],” he said. “I think it was a matter of debt at the wrong time to build some terrific facilities, which they did.”
No one will know the fate of the golf course until the new owners divulge their plans, Torrence said, but the buyer could certainly choose to maintain business as usual.
“Hopefully this will just be a transition from stockholder ownership to a new private owner,” he said. “What things they may do differently is hard to say. Everybody does it differently. The good news is you’ve got great facilities to work with. You don’t have to go in and build new clubhouses and that kind of thing.”
More information about the Pulaski CC auction can be found at http://trfauctions.com/temp/2017_05_17.html.
Pulaski CC is just the latest golf club in the Roanoke area to run into hard times, the Times noted. Auburn Hills Golf Course in Riner, Va. sold at auction for $744,000 in 2016, according to property records.
And clubs in larger communities haven’t been spared from the industry trend, as all three of the Roanoke Valley’s full-service private country clubs have struggled in recent years with membership declines. and Hidden Valley Country Club in Salem, Va. describing its situation as a “cash crisis” in a February letter to its members ((http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2017/03/roanoke-valley-va-clubs-report-declining-membership-trend/).
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