Building a Golf Course for Dummies

[Tony_Chapman]

The "What does your private club look like" and "If you won the lottery threads" have all been beaten to death on this board. I throw out this hypothetical question:

You have a ton of land to build a golf course(s) that would require little earth movement. You would like to pursue something that has limited private memberships, but is open for public play as well.

Where do you start? How much money would be good to raise? What other questions are out there that you would need to think of?

Looking forward to anybody's thoughts.

[Jason Topp]

I read a book about a year ago.  "Driving the Green."   I believe the author's last name was Strawn.  It describes the story of a course being built by Arthur Hills in the Palm Beach area.  I thought it provided interesting detail on the various considerations and processes that go into building a course.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tony,

Not trying to be a wise guy, but your parameters are too wide. Need to be more specific on location and price of the land.

However based on my research for a project that is most probably not going to happen, the absolute minimum to build a golf course without a clubhouse is $3.0-3.5 mm (assuming you get free land by marking up the value of the houses, because they are near/on a golf course). If you have to buy the land for something like a stand alone project, add that to your price and then comes the clubhouse. There may be some examples where it is done cheaper, but you are probably safe on the other 98%. People here talk about the course, but you need driveways and roads and sewers and lawyers and permitting and ......

By the way Lowell Schulmann's book on building Atlantic GC was very good. Used to be available at www.mgagolf.org

[Tony_Chapman]

Mike - Let's say, since I'm a Husker, that the land is in the Nebraska Sand Hills and there is no cost to acquire it. It's bought and paid for. Does this help?

There would be no houses, etc. Again, think SH.

[Mike_Sweeney]

T,

Your biggest cost would be the sprinkler system. Out there you will need a good one. Minimum $750,000. The second biggest expense (assuming you don't hire The Faz) is probably infrastructure to get to the course from whatever road is there.

See my email on the other stuff.

[Doug Siebert]

Driveways?  Clubhouse?

Are these things REALLY necessary if you want to build a good course on the cheap (i.e., spend your money on what counts?)  I've been to courses with a long gravel driveway in lieu of paving, and I can't see any need to spend more than $300k or so building a clubhouse and machine shed necessary for what really counts:  place to pay, place to pee, place to grab a cold sandwich at the turn, place to keep the mowers dry.  Heck, a trailer and a quonset hut would be fine by me, I come for the golf, not sitting in the clubhouse afterwards, but that may be a bit too minimalist!

If its remote, you don't run sewer and water lines, you get a septic tank and a well.  For electricity if it is really remote, it might make sense to put solar panels on the roof (might need a propane generator if you want to charge up electric carts at night)

I'm kind of disappointed if it really would cost $3+ million to build a minimalist course.  The sprinkler system I can understand, and I'm sure the greens cost a whole lot more to build than I could ever imagine.  But beyond that?  What if you are like my friend Harry, a multimillionaire developer who develops one big piece of land at a time, by himself.  He'll go out there on his dozer and run around, rent heavier equipment where necessary, and only subcontracts when he's to the point of running utilities and paving the streets.  He says, "why pay someone to do something I love to do for free?"  I keep meaning to take him up on his offer and letting me drive around on his dozer sometime, always wanted to do that when I was a little kid in a sandbox

[Tom_Doak]

Tony:

We have built a handful of courses for between $2 million and $3 million construction budget, including a lot of what is considered to be our best work.

However, on top of that "construction cost" you must add a year's maintenance costs for the grow-in maintenance, and then another half million dollars or more for a maintenance barn and equipment.

Yes, you could build a course for a million dollars if you owned the dozers and ran them yourself and got a bunch of farm kids to put in the irrigation system and so on and so forth.  But it doesn't happen often, and a lot of people try and fail with that accounting method.  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tony,
Why on earth do you want to build a golf course for Matt Ward & Lou Duran?