PD Investments bought one of the oldest clubs in Palm Desert, Calif. out of bankruptcy in 2011 and reopened both its 18-hole championship course and 9-hole executive course a year later. But residents are now petitioning to keep the acreage for the 9-hole course, which they say has not been maintained, as open space if it does not remain playable. The new owners say both residential and recreational uses are being considered, but “it won’t be wall-to-wall homes.”
Preliminary plans to develop homes on a one-time nine-hole golf course at one of the oldest country clubs in Palm Desert, Calif. are already drawing fierce opposition from residents, The Desert Sun reported.
PD Investments bought Palm Desert Country Club in 2011, after it had fallen into bankruptcy two years earlier, The Desert Sun reported, and the sale included 180 acres of turf, split into an 18-hole course and a 9-hole course.
Both reopened in January 2012, but the story is now a tale of two courses, The Desert Sun reported, with the larger “championship course” remaining verdant and well-used, while the nine-hole “executive course” has been closed and regressed into an expanse of dry yellowed grass, incongruously dotted with old-growth trees.
Now the stone markers on the executive course have been removed, and those who look out onto it “are right back where we were before,” said Marilyn Forney, who‘s lived in the community since 1988.
Forney told The Desert Sun that residents want to see it remain a golf course or open space, citing petitions against any kind of development. Just over half of the 875 property owners who front on one of the two courses have signed the petition, Forney said.
Wilf Weinkauf, General Manager of the course and a partner in PD Investments, said residential and recreational uses are being considered for the executive course, but “it won’t be wall-to-wall homes,” The Desert Sun reported.
“For one thing, my home is on the executive course,” Weinkauf added.
Weinkauf did meet with the new owners’ planning staff earlier this year about possible development ideas, but no official plans have been submitted to the city yet, The Desert Sun reported.The owners will hold a meeting with residents in the next few months once the plan is firmed up, Weinkauf said, but he didn’t want to release drawings or other specifics ahead of that time.
“I don’t want everyone to feel like we’re doing something immediately,” he said.
Something has to be done with the executive course because when open, it loses $200,000 a year, Weinkauf told The Desert Sun. But longtime residents say the nine-hole course used to be the more profitable venture, and the current owners aren’t adequately promoting it.
“That little course used to make more money than the big course,” said Barbara Powers, who leads the committee gathering the signatures. “They used to charge $10, and every mom and pop from every trailer park in the valley used to come here, they used to be four groups deep waiting to play, from morning to sundown. In fact they used to play out there at night, with night-lighted ball.”
The Palm Desert Country Club area has about 1,500 homes, The Desert Sun reported. Some of those are within HOAs but most are not, which complicates the quest to maintain the two courses.
PD Investments initiated a plan last year to create an assessment district so nearby homes could be taxed to help maintain the course, The Desert Sun reported, but that plan was abandoned in October in the face of stiff opposition. The developers still have the option of restarting the process, it was noted.
The golf course does have an open-space easement with the city, but Powers and Forney told The Desert Sun that a clause for that easement to be “in perpetuity” was promised to residents during a 2011 city meeting, when a plan to build 95 homes on part of the open space was presented.
That promise was apparently never recorded, however, The Desert Sun reported. Tony Bagato, Palm Desert’s Principal Planner, said no record of a perpetuity clause could be found in writing. The current open-space easement can be lifted by the City Council, Bagato said, “but it has to be at a public hearing, with residents’ input.”
Weinkauf told The Desert Sun that he’s getting “lots of ideas and opinions” from the neighbors and that “Nothing will happen without the residents’ input.”
Forney said the stakes of allowing anything to be built on Palm Desert Country Club are too high, and she hopes the issue will resonate beyond the community.
“Gee, the historical society and conservationists, you know, other city officials, this is a historic site out here, it’s 51 years old,” she said. “It should be preserved, it’s one of the first golf courses ever built in Palm Desert. And to destroy it, through construction? It’s irreversible and inconceivable.”
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