The Sandia Park, N.M. property has been acquired from Roger Cox & Associates by the principals in the Manhattan firm of Alvarez & Marsal. The new owners have already informed home and lot owners in the Paa-Ko Communities of their plans to build a 62-room lodge and 18 guest cottages to attract tourists to the state’s top-rated golf course.
Roger Cox & Associates has sold Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club in Sandia Park, N.M., to a pair of New York City businessmen who specialize in turning around under-performing companies, New Mexico Golf News reported.
In a letter to about 500 Paa-Ko Communities home and lot owners, the course’s new owners, Tony Alvarez and Bryan Marsal, principals of the Manhattan firm of Alvarez & Marsal, announced the change of ownership in the state’s top-rated golf course, New Mexico Golf News reported.
In the letter, Alvarez and Marsal also announced their intent to build a 62-room lodge and 18 guest cottages to attract tourists to the golf course, New Mexico Golf News reported.
In a phone interview on March 19, Marsal told New Mexico Golf News that the deal included the 27-hole Paa-Ko Ridge Golf Club course and practice facilities, land for tourist accommodations adjacent to the practice range, and water rights (the turfed area at Paa-Ko Ridge GC is about 105 acres, New Mexico Golf News noted).
Marsal declined to disclose the purchase price.“We looked at this situation and, with the right accommodations, we believe we can make something special,” he said.
“Whatever we do will be first class,” Marsal added. “I’m excited. It’s a beautiful golf course, a real gem.”
Alvarez & Marsal describes itself as a turnaround company that identifies quality businesses and properties that need management restructuring, New Mexico Golf News reported. Its founders are described on the company’s Wikipedia page as “workout” specialists that seek to salvage investments through management intervention in, and debt restructuring of, the companies they lend to.
Alvarez previously worked at Coopers & Lybrand and Marsal worked as a banker at Citibank before forming their company in 1983, according to the Alvarez & Marsal Wikipedia page, New Mexico Golf News reported.
In the new owners’ letter, Marsal described himself and his partner as golfers who several years ago decided “to transition our love of the game into a business [and] to develop, own and manage a select group of properties that we could proudly share with our friends and the greater golfing community,” New Mexico Golf News reported.
In his phone interview with New Mexico Golf News, Marsal described his firm’s involvement in golf tourism as a “hobby” that doesn’t constitute its core business. The companies that Alvarez & Markel have helped steer to profitability, according to the company’s Wikipedia page, include Target, HealthSouth, Timex and Arthur Andersen.
The firm’s work has also included development, from the ground up, of Hogs Head Golf Club in County Kerry, Ireland, Marsal told New Mexico Golf News. At that property, he said, a 68-room lodge and cottages was built that gave tourists visiting the nearby Waterville Golf Links a reason to stay for more than a single round.
Marsal told New Mexico Golf News that he carries a 12 handicap and belongs to Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., while Alvarez, a 9 handicap, belongs to Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.
“I’m a 12 but it’s winter here in New York and I doubt I could play to a 15 or 16, but give me a month,” Marsal added.
Marsal acknowledge to New Mexico Golf News that since the death of Roger Cox & Associates’ founder several years ago, the golf course at Paa-Ko Ridge has suffered slightly from neglect. “But not a lot,” he added, still calling it “the finest course in the state of New Mexico, with 27 great holes.”
The new owners plan to keep on Rob Murray, the Superintendent who grew the course in and then rose to his current position of General Manager, New Mexico Golf News reported. On March 19, Murray told the publication that he expected to meet with one of the principals of the new ownership firm before the end of the month.
Paa-Ko Ridge GC, designed by Finger Dye Spann, was named by Golf Digest as the best new course to open in 2000 and has perennially been ranked as the top golf course, public or private, in the state, New Mexico Golf News reported. It started as 18 holes and a third nine, named Nos. 19-27 to preserve the identity of the award-winning original 18, opened in 2006.
The course currently ranks in the Top 50 of both Golf Digest’s and Golf magazine’s “Top 100 You Can Play” lists, New Mexico Golf News reported.
In the early 2000s, Paa-Ko Ridge recorded annual play of 28,000 to 30,000 rounds, but that changed in 2008 with the real estate crash, Murray told New Mexico Golf News. The failure of the Albuquerque economy to recover on a par with the rest of the nation has seen Paa-Ko Ridge record 22,000 to 23,000 rounds a year since 2008, the publication said.
The golf course was originally built as a loss leader to attract home buyers to the new high-end community, but over the years it has suffered from disappointingly low patronage by Albuquerque-area golfers for several reasons, New Mexico Golf News reported.
Besides the stagnant local economy, it lies at the fringe of the city’s metropolitan area and is also the most expensive golf course in a market known for its affordable municipal courses and Native American casino courses. Players who don’t live in the Paa-Ko Communities typically save a round there for a special occasion, such as a birthday or Father’s Day, New Mexico Golf News reported.
Paa-Ko’s peak high-season weekend rate with cart is $117, New Mexico Golf News reported, and in contrast, the walking rate for 18 holes at the three Albuquerque 18-hole city courses is $31.50, with a $1 increase expected to kick in on April 15. The peak rate with cart at Santa Ana Golf Club in Santa Ana Pueblo, N.M., north of Alburquerque, is $65.
The concept of lodging at Paa-Ko is not new, New Mexico Golf News noted. After the original owners of the golf club recognized that the course could not sustain itself solely through local play, they commissioned the Albuquerque architecture firm of Dale Dekker & Associates in the mid-200s to design a a lodge and “casitas” to attract golf tourists. But those plans were shelved with the collapse of the U.S. real estate market in 2008.
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