The new headquarters will anchor a 600-acre, mixed-use development with an initial investment worth more than $500B that will include the building of two championship golf courses and an Omni resort. Under the agreement with the city of Frisco and other partners, two PGA Championships and a potential Ryder Cup will be brought to the Dallas area.
The PGA of America has announced that it will be moving its headquarters from Palm Beach County, Florida to Frisco, Texas, outside of Dallas. The new headquarters will anchor a 600-acre, mixed-use development with an initial investment worth more than half-a-billion dollars that will include the building of two new championship golf courses.
Under the agreement, two PGA Championships (in 2027 and 2034), two KPMG Women’s PGA Championships (in 2025 and 2031) and potentially a Ryder Cup will be held in Frisco on the new courses, along with several other junior, senior and professional championship tournaments.
In addition to the two championship courses, the development plans also call for a short course and practice areas totaling 45 holes; a clubhouse; Class AA office space; a 500-room Omni resort and 127,000-sq. ft. conference center; a technologically advanced retail village; parks and open space, plus several miles of trails.
The 600 acres are primarily situated within 2,500 acres being master planned by Hunt Realty Investments. The development will be open to the public, as well as golfers.
The golf courses are expected to open in summer 2022, and the hotel, convention center, and other facilities within six months of that date. The development is scheduled to host the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in 2023 as its first tournament event.
The PGA is teaming on the project with Omni Stillwater Woods (OSW), a joint venture led by Omni Hotels & Resorts with Stillwater Capital and Woods Capital; the City of Frisco, as well as its Economic and Community Development Corporations (FEDC); and the Frisco Independent School District (FISD).
The entire project will have an initial, estimated public-private investment totaling more than $520 million. The PGA of America will invest $30 million to build its 100,000-sq. ft. global headquarters and education facility, where it will initially employ at least 100 people.
OSW will invest $455 million to purchase the land, construct the hotel, conference center, retail space, parking facilities, and golf courses.
The golf courses, clubhouse, practice areas and associated public facilities will be owned by the city. More than 300 FISD high-school golfers will practice at the facility on a weekly basis.
The agreement calls for the City of Frisco and its development corporations (each funded by a half-cent of Frisco’s sales tax) and FISD to contribute no more than $35 million toward development of the public facilities.
The City of Frisco will also provide performance incentives, which include a portion of hotel occupancy, mixed beverage, sales and property taxes generated by the hotel and associated retail on the site for a 20-year-period. These performance incentives are estimated to total between $52 million and $74 million.
Additionally, the State of Texas will contribute all the hotel and sales tax, along with a portion of mixed beverage tax collected on the project for 10 years. The state grant total is valued at more than $62.5 million over 10 years.
FEDC is also investing $14.3 million over a 15-year period for the PGA of America’s headquarters relocation, job creation and PGA tournament incentives.
The initial 25-year agreement calls for the land and conference center to be publicly owned by the City of Frisco and operated by OSW, which will pay $100,000 a year in rent to the city. That lease will increase two percent after the fifth year of the development agreement. OSW is responsible for all maintenance and capital expenses while retaining revenues. Omni Hotels & Resorts will own and operate the resort.
The agreement is estimated to have an economic impact of more than $2.5 billion over the next 20 years, based on a city-commissioned tourism feasibility study that considered the economics of golf course activities, including tournaments, plus the additional impact from the new conference center.
The PGA’s Northern Texas Section will also move to PGA Frisco, where state-of-the-art connectivity will provide opportunities to pilot promising new growth-of-the-game programming for all 41 Sections of the PGA of America.