A $2 million restoration of the Daufuskie Island, S.C. course has yielded disappointing results, so the owner is now proposing to turn the clubhouse into an inn and develop as much as 50,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. Annual rounds of 35,000 are needed to make the club financially viable, one planner said, “but they’re lucky if they can get 2,000 per year at this destination.”
Less than three years after completing a $2 million golf course restoration, Bloody Point Golf Club on South Carolina’s Daufuskie Island could give up the game under a proposal that would convert fairways to additional housing and create a hospitality district around the current clubhouse, The Island Packet of Hilton Head, S.C. reported.
With post-renovation rounds only a fraction of what had been anticipated, course owner Brian McCarthy is now seeking to make the Bloody Point clubhouse part of a 120-room inn and surround it with as much as 50,000 square feet of commercial space that could include a place for local artists to sell their wares, The Island Packet reported.
The plan also would permit an additional 150 housing units to be built over outlying segments of the course. Some 68 acres would be preserved as open space, including a “grand lawn” where the current practice range stands.
“You hate to see [the golf course] go, but you can’t run it if you’re not making money,” said Mark Baker, a Hilton Head Island-based architectural planner who outlined McCarthy’s proposal to the planning commission of Beaufort County (S.C.) earlier in January, told The Island Packet.
The commission voted to table the proposal until February to accommodate further study, The Island Packet reported. The plan has been endorsed 7-0 by Bloody Point’s property owners association, although some owners have taken issue with a meeting in which the plan was presented.
That meeting was listed as “informational,” drawing only about 40 owners out of 109 who own lots, The Island Packet reported.
“There were no dissensions at that meeting,” association President Tony Simonelli told The Island Packet. “The thinking was that this plan is better than what we went through.”
Bloody Point sat closed from October 2008 through summer 2011 while the property, then part of Daufuskie Island Resort, was tied up in bankruptcy proceedings, The Island Packet reported. Weeds went unchecked, reaching as tall as six feet by the time McCarthy purchased the course.
Love Golf Design, headed by five-time RBC Heritage champion Davis Love III and his brother Mark, was brought in to restore the original Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish design and add a handful of upgrades. Bloody Point GC reopened in May 2013.
Nonetheless, Bloody Point has struggled to attract interest in a locale boasting five dozen other golf courses, The Island Packet reported. On Daufuskie Island alone, four courses compete for attention on an island reachable only by ferry.
“I’ve lived here since 2003,” Simonelli said, “and there has never been significant enough play on Bloody Point under any of the ownership [groups].”
At $35 per round, Baker told the commission, it would take more than 35,000 rounds per year to make Bloody Point financially viable.
“They’re lucky if they can get 2,000 rounds per year at this destination, even on a very high-quality course,” he said.
Baker also cited changing demographics that show young adults are attracted to other outdoor activities such as hiking, bicycling and kayaking, The Island Packet reported.
“The demand has changed significantly,” he said. “It’s underperforming as golf and they’re trying to position the property in a way that can respond to today’s market.”
Part of the proposed commercial space, he added, could be used for bicycle or kayak rentals.
Despite the flagging economics, the concept of trading golf for shops and additional housing leaves some owners unsettled, as does the understated way the plan was presented to owners, The Island Packet reported.
“This is built as a golf community. Golf is the essence of what Bloody Point is,” David Fingerhut, a Hilton Head Island resident who owns a Bloody Point lot, told the commission.
“I think if the owner of the golf course wants to do something like this, call your meeting [of owners] and make your case to the owners that’ll be affected,” Fingerhut added.
The Bloody Point POA will conduct its annual meeting in March, a month after the planning commission takes up the proposal again, The Island Packet reported. Even if the commission approves the plan, the Beaufort County Council would still have to give final approval.
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