What will be called the Teptonka Club will be built at an expected cost of $21 million 10 miles north of Willmar, Minn., with a projected opening of May 2024. The initiation buy-in will earn 1% equity that can then be sold at market prices. Instead of monthly dues, there will be a $25,000 annual fee. The golf course, designed by OCM Golf Course Design, an Australian firm, will not have traditional tee boxes, and only 90 golfers will be allowed on the course each day. Being likened to Nebraska’s Sand Hills, about 35% of the membership is projected to be from outside Minnesota; the property will have 40 lodging rooms.
OCM Golf Course Design, a golf-course architecture firm based in Sandringham, Australia that was awarded a master planning engagement in 2020 at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club (https://clubandresortbusiness.com/clubs-report-various-stages-of-renovations/), is now involved with plans for an exclusive 18-hole golf resort about 10 miles north of Willmar, Minn., the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported.
OCM expects the project to cost $21 million, the Business Journal reported, broken down as follows:
- $7.5 million for golf course construction
- $7 million for construction and related expenses for roughly 40 lodging rooms
- $1.6 million for the clubhouse and surrounding area
- $1.2 million to acquire the roughly 190 acres
- $900,000 in design fees.
The initiation fee to the facility, which will be called the Teptonka Club, will be $100,000, the Business Journal reported. The buy-in will earn 1% equity in the club, which members can then sell at market prices, less a $5,000 fee paid back to the club.
There won’t be monthly dues, but instead a $25,000 annual fee starting in May 2024, when the course is slated to open. Food and beverage will be included in those fees.
The project encompasses about 190 acres and will be quasi-private, the Business Journal reported. Each membership will come with 100 days of golf annually and can include up to four people.
Members will be able to use their allotted days pretty much however they want, the Business Journal reported. For example, a member could golf in a group of four for 25 days to use up an annual allotment, play as much as they want on any given day. Members can also use days for non-members.
Details on the club’s course, its difficulty level and length are still undecided, the Business Journal reported. The course won’t have traditional tee boxes and instead will let golfers more or less choose where they play from. Only 90 golfers will be allowed on the course each day, and rounds are expected to take about 3.5 hours — less than the typical four-plus hour rounds.
“[We’re] going to find the best 18 holes of golf and add up the par when we’re done,” Mark Haugejorde, identified as the club’s captain, a project manager and leader on membership development, told the Business Journal.
Haugejorde is also CEO of At the Turn, a nonprofit serving youth in the Twin Cities area. C+RB recently reported on the group’s efforts with a new caddie education program (https://clubandresortbusiness.com/twin-cities-clubs-partner-with-nonprofit-group-to-help-minorities-through-caddie-education/).
Membership in the Teptonka club will be by invitation only and interested parties are already inquiring about getting in, the Business Journal reported. The club’s backers are looking to raise $14 million from the first 100 memberships.
One of the best comparisons to what Teptonka Club will be like is Sand Hills Golf Club in Mullen, Neb., Haugejorde told the Business Journal.
“Minnesota has not netted a new private club in what, 20 years?” he said. “We’ve been looking for three years for the right place.”
“[The club will be] exclusive, but not exclusionary,” he added.
About 65% of the membership is expected to made up of Minnesotans, according to Haugejorde, down from the initial 80% projections.
The OCM Golf Course Design website describes the site where the Teptonka course will be built as “a beautiful piece of sandy, undulating ground, perfect for golf,” the Business Journal reported.
“Shakopee Creek cuts through the edge of the property, surrounded by cedar trees and spectacular cliffs before opening up into a broad wetland in the east,” the website describes. “It’s an amazing canvas, and we look forward to starting construction later this year.”
Prinsburg, Minn.-based Duininck Golf will do the actual construction on the project, the Business Journal reported.
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