Three courses are now seeking to lease land for natural gas exploration, a television station reported, adding to a trend that has also seen several properties be converted for housing developments or move from private to public.
As part of looking at the economic pressures being felt by country clubs and golf courses in the Pittsburgh area, Andy Sheehan of KDKA CBS 2 reported that three courses in the region, including Grand View Golf Club in North Braddock, Pa., are currently in the process of trying to lease land to shale gas exploration, which has experienced a major boom through much of Pennsylvania.
Sheehan’s report also noted that several courses in the region, faced with declining play and a difficulty in attracting new and younger golfers, have already been shut down and are being turned into housing developments. These included Venango Trails Golf Club in Warrendale, Pa., which has already been shut down and developed; Highland Country Club in Pittsburgh’s West View section, which has been approved for development, and Churchill Valley Country Club in Pittsburgh’s Penn Hills section, which has been closed and bought by a development company.
“Some of these golf courses are some of the most beautiful properties in western Pennsylvania,” Dan Murrer of RealSTATs, a Pittsburgh real estate information company, told Sheehan. “So developers are seeing the value in that and are converting to homes.”
Murrer also pointed out that “Nowadays, people are spending their money differently [and that means] fewer members in the clubs.”
Sheehan’s report also highlighted Brackenridge Heights, a property in Natrona Heights, Pa. that went out of business as a country club four years ago for lack of members, and has been reinvented after being bought by the Tomson family at a sheriff’s sale.
“This was a private place, and if you weren’t a member, you weren’t allowed here. And it had been that way since 1914,” Rubus Tomson, one of six family members in the new ownership group, told Sheehan.
After buying the property in 2013, the Tomsons dropped “country club” from the property’s name, cemented over the swimming pool, opened the restaurant to the general public and created a no-frills golf course, KDKA reported.
“People want to go and find the best deal. They don’t want to be committed to anything,” Tomson said.
Sheehan also interviewed Mike Choma, an older golfer playing Brackenridge who agreed with Tomson.
“The kids today, they’re doing other things. They want it quick, they want it fast, they want it now,” Choma said. “I think [public play is] the way to go now. People don’t want to be committed to one course.”
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