The Grove City, Ohio golf course is built over a landfill, and the agency is seeking a management firm to take over operations after it gained ownership earlier this year as the result of a lawsuit.
A lawsuit earlier this year has left the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) as owners of the Phoenix Golf Links in Grove City, Ohio, and the agency is seeking a management company to take over operations, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported.
SWACO will hold an informational meeting at the golf course today for people who are interested in submitting bids to manage the course. The authority issued a request for proposals for golf-course managers this month. Bids are to be filed with SWACO by October 17, the Dispatch reported.
“If we get a company to operate it, that’s our preference,” said Ty Marsh, who took over as executive director of the authority just days before the lawsuit was settled. “We think it’s a nice public amenity.”
The course is built atop a closed county landfill that SWACO took over in 1989. A decade later, the authority decided it could do more with the property and hired a company to build and manage a golf course on the land. Years later, it was discovered that methane gas was leaking from a gas-collection system under the course. Both SWACO and the company running the golf course felt the other was responsible for fixing the problem, which landed the matter in court, the Dispatch reported.
The sides settled in January. The former golf course managers received a little more than $2.3 million to buy out their 30-year lease, and SWACO received control of the property and course. Marsh said it was too late to find an operator for the golf course after the authority took over this year, so SWACO hired some existing employees as temporary workers and ran the course for a year to gather information for potential bidders, the Dispatch reported.
Carol Ann Phillips, SWACO’s chief financial officer, said that this time the authority will retain ownership and maintenance responsibility for the gas-collection system under the course, and will cover the cost of repairs to the system, the Dispatch reported.
Philips expects SWACO will have to spend about $290,000 a year on routine upkeep and maintenance to meet safety and environmental standards. That’s on top of the about $1.8 million it is expected to cost to make full repairs to the gas-collection system, work that can be done in phases while the course is open.The authority already has spent about $1.2 million to fix the immediate problem of leaking gas, work that was done while the lawsuit was active, the Dispatch reported.
Phoenix Golf Links is an unusual course in that it has 19 holes. This allows SWACO to close any one hole to make repairs to the underlying system while leaving the other 18 holes open, the Dispatch reported.
While the authority takes on an annual expense to manage the gas collection system, it’s a decision that could lead to additional revenue. Scott Perry, SWACO’s operations director, said that technology is being developed to safely burn the low-grade gas collected from the old landfill to power turbines that create electricity. He said the authority could someday use that electricity to help power the golf course and sell the remainder back to the local power grid for a profit, the Dispatch reported.
If an operator cannot be found to manage the course, Marsh said, the authority likely will convert the land back to a more traditional landfill cap because of environmental guidelines. Converting the course to an earthen cap would cost about $2.4 million. Marsh said that is another reason that the authority would like to see the land remain a golf course, but he was clear: “We’re not going to run it,” the Dispatch reported.
He said it is likely the authority will offer to lease the property to an operator for a fixed rate and allow it to keep revenue from the golf, pro shop and dining operations, the Dispatch reported.
Phillips said the course has generated about $500,000 so far this year—it’s not known yet whether that will be enough to break even—but that was without much promotion or the efficiencies that could be developed through a long-term management plan. The 10-year contract will give a potential manager the time to develop the business, she told the Dispatch.
Barry Fromm, founder and CEO of Value Recovery Group, and David Poe, vice president of the company’s real-estate development arm, said running a golf course on top of a landfill presents unique challenges that potential managers would have to weigh carefully before becoming involved, the Dispatch reported.
The company runs the only other landfill-located golf course in central Ohio, the Golf Depot in the Central Park of Gahanna development. Both said Phoenix Golf Links has some challenges, including the industrial neighborhood where it is located and maintaining such a large, 185-acre site, the Dispatch reported.
Poe said that SWACO is doing the right thing by trying to find outside expertise to run the facility, however. “I think they’ve been smart to do what they’ve done,” he said, “looking at it as a public-private partnership, where the risks are clearly defined for each party, and the rewards are appropriately allocated.”
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