Golf Courses Feel Financial Strain

By admin | November 23, 2011 at 8:00 am

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, July 24, 2010
By IAN McCANN / The Dallas Morning News
imccann@dallasnews.com
It’s a tough time in the municipal golf business.

People have less money to spend on greens fees, and the weather since last fall has been unpredictable, even by North Texas standards.

As a result, cities and their golf course operators are feeling financial strain.

Garland bought out its contractor. Mesquite took over operation of its course and spent $500,000 on equipment and capital improvements. Richardson is pouring tax dollars into its golf fund for the first time in at least a decade.

“There’s a lot of inventory, and there’s limited discretionary dollars,” said David Morgan, the assistant city manager who oversees Richardson’s Sherrill Park Municipal Golf Course. “The golf market has been a challenge for a number of years.”

Richardson has had to dip into its golf fund reserves to pay for debt and operations in recent years. But it has had enough in the Sherrill Park till to cover that until this year. The city will put $425,000 into the golf fund, a move that city officials said they hope will be a one-time measure.

“We have a real interest to drive rounds next year,” Morgan said.

Richardson lost money in two ways: Rain in the fall and late spring kept players off the course, and dismal conditions of the greens forced the city to discount fees to play at Sherrill Park.

Heavy usage has compacted the soil, making the greens drain poorly. That, combined with an annual chemical treatment and high sodium content in golf course well water, hampered the grass’ growth this spring. Richardson used an agronomist to help restore the greens, and regular pricing is again in effect.

Rounds are expected to be down about 20 percent this year at the 36-hole layout in Richardson, from about 100,000 each of the past two years.

Garland, too, has seen a drop in rounds at 63-hole Firewheel Golf Park. Through June, nearly 60,000 rounds have been played, down about 7,600 from the same time last year.

In response, the city is spending $671,000 to buy golf pro Don Kennedy’s equipment, mostly golf carts. The city is entering a six-month contract with Kennedy to run the course, with a $69,000 monthly management fee. Out of that, he will have to pay for staffing the course in addition to paying himself. The city will keep the $2.3 million in annual course revenues but will assume costs of running the facility.

“We feel this will allow Don to focus more on making the golf operation more successful,” city spokeswoman Dorothy White said.

Rounds played at 18-hole Mesquite Municipal have been flat from last year, an annual pace of about 36,000 rounds, since the city took over operation in May. It closed the course for nearly a month to perform building and course maintenance.

“The management was no longer able to sustain operations out there,” said Cliff Keheley, Mesquite’s parks and recreation director. “We felt it was better to take it into direct public control.”

He said he expects last year to have been the bottom, and full city control should only be temporary. Keheley said that once the city restores the course’s condition and the economy recovers, the city will be in a better position to once again outsource the operation.

While running golf courses is forcing cities to dip into their cash reserves, they remain committed to the golf business. Local municipal courses aren’t expected to join the 100 to 150 public courses (both publicly and privately owned) nationwide that a recent National Golf Foundation report said could close in each of the next several years.

A key to keeping a golf course alive, the report said, is ongoing maintenance and a commitment to improving the course.

That’s happening in Plano, which will respond to a decade-long decline in rounds by closing the aging Pecan Hollow Golf Course this fall for a yearlong, $9 million renovation.

“The course conditions have been declining, and that’s why we’re doing the renovation,” said Jim Fox, Plano’s park services manager. “We want to be proud of this facility.”