With Selva Marina CC and Mill Cove GC undergoing redevelopment, the Jacksonville Business Journal notes that the properties are bucking national trends by incorporating golf into the next phase, rather than relying solely on residential development. “We’re going to be a long ways away from ever hitting the peak of 2006, but there are more buyers and more funds are being formed, both foreign and domestic,” said Jeff Woolson of CBRE Group Inc.’s golf and resort group.
The two golf course redevelopments under way in Jacksonville, Fla., are unusual situations in the golf world, the Jacksonville Business Journal reported.
Golf course properties nationwide are on an upswing—but it’s a relative upswing, as the sector and the sport come bouncing off the bottom of a recession that all but killed the real estate and crippled the game, the Business Journal reported.
In Jacksonville, though, a group of developers is adding home sites to Selva Marina Country Club and redeveloping the golf course, and the finished product will be renamed Atlantic Beach Country Club. M.G. Orender’s Hampton Golf Inc. is also at work on the redevelopment of Mill Cove Golf Club, the Business Journal reported.
The repurposing of golf courses is happening around the country, but the property’s next phase rarely includes golf. More common is new single-family residential or public parks, the Business Journal reported.
“The highest and best use for golf course dirt is not a golf course,” said Steven Ekovich, managing director of Marcus & Millichap’s national golf and resort properties group in Tampa. “Golf devalues the real estate—you’re growing grass. You get a lot more income by building apartment buildings or shopping centers.”
“Eight straight years of more golf courses going under than being built has helped,” said Jeff Woolson, managing director of CBRE Group Inc.’s golf and resort group. “But mostly it’s the economy. People are playing more golf.”
Because of that, Woolson, who is based in San Diego, said he’s seeing more interest in investors and buyers—but it’s a small increase in raw numbers, the Business Journal reported. “When you have one group financing them and now there’s two, that’s a 100 percent increase,” he said. “We’re going to be a long ways away from ever hitting the peak of 2006, but there are more buyers and more funds are being formed, both foreign and domestic.”
Ekovich said he’s seen some other creative adaptations of former golf courses, the Business Journal reported.
“We had one client who used the golf course to dig out the dirt for the [Department of Transportation] and is using the holes as a pond,” Ekovich said. “So the homeowners now look at ponds instead of a golf course that’s laying fallow.”
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