Stonehenge Co. bought the Westerville, Ohio club last April and has spent $2 million to improve the clubhouse and golf course. The Pete Dye-design course features a signature par 3 and a short-game area, while the clubhouse includes improved locker rooms and a pro shop, plus a new dedicated golf simulator room.
The new owners of The Golf Club at Little Turtle in Westerville, Ohio are ready to show off a multimillion-dollar renovation to the clubhouse and course, Columbus (Ohio) Business First reported.
Dublin, Ohio real estate development and construction firm Stonehenge Co., which bought the private club in April 2015, has completed most improvements planned under the refresh of the facility, which opened in 1969, Business First reported.
At the recommendation of the Hurdzan Group of Columbus, the Pete Dye-designed course now features a signature par 3 across an expanded pond, overlooking the renovated clubhouse. There is now a short-game area, with an 18-hole “par 2” course, Business First reported.
And inside the clubhouse, Stonehenge improved the pro shop and locker rooms, plus added a dedicated golf simulator room. Only a hallway is left to renovate, Business First reported.
“We feel comfortable about where we’re going. Our membership is very excited about what’s happening,” said Stonehenge Vice President Adam Trautner. “Hopefully we get a little breather now that we’ve gotten through this and they can just experience the facilities that they have. And we’ll come back and finish that one little section probably early next year.”
Improvements to the course and clubhouse will total more than $1 million each, Trautner said. With more than 80% of construction completed, focus can shift to attracting new members, marketing an event facility and beginning new residential development around the course. The event center will be managed by Dublin’s Taste Hospitality Group, a restaurant business owned by Sheila Trautner, Adam’s wife, Business First reported.
More than half the club’s roughly 400 members—including social, corporate and family accounts—stayed on when Stonehenge bought the club last year for $2.1 million from the Turtle Golf Property Ltd. ownership group. But others left as Stonehenge sought to fix what Trautner called a financially unstable membership structure, Business First reported.
“We’re basically putting (rates) on a competitive platform,” he said. “We don’t feel you could charge those rates at what the conditions of the club used to be. We would call them market competitive rates.”
New membership fees run from $200 to $300 depending on type, and there is an initiation fee of about $3,000. “We have some room to grow,” Trautner said, noting 300 to 400 members are targeted. “We expected that this was a probably three-year plan when it came to the club itself.”
Over a five-year horizon, Stonehenge plans to build more residences on 15 acres around the course. Little Turtle was planned as a 5,000-unit community, and about 4,600 have been built, Trautner said.
The developer’s approach of maintaining the golf course, while investing around it, runs counter to other recent projects involving Minerva Lake Golf Club in Columbus and Riviera Country Club in Dublin, Business First reported.
“Pretty much any other golf course redevelopment that’s been done lately has been pretty simple—turn off the lights, do away with golf and take a bulldozer through the entire development, and subdivide lots,” Trautner said. “This here is a complete reverse. However, we are able to add a component of development to help the club. What we’re looking at is, with our development plans, it will be something that can feed into the club on a daily basis.
“This is almost a 50-year-old golf club. There’s a nostalgia here that we definitely respect and we want to make sure that we maintain,” Trautner said. “Some members have been here since inception.”
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.