Media calls for UAW to give up golf course in Michigan (Black Lake)

[Mike Mosely]

Interesting question...should someone asking for a handout get to keep some expensive baubles...

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/12/16/money-pit-the-uaws-gold-plated-golf-course/

http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/Should_UAW_Sell_its_Championship_Golf_Course.html

Is the course any good?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
I'd be more upset as a taxpayer finding out about Goldman Sachs' tax bill. Last year they paid 34.5%, this year they'll be moving the billions we gave them offshore, and lowering their rate to 1%.

Who possibly cares (except some nut job like Malkin) about a few mil. for a golf course. Think big, thieve bigger. 


 

[RJ_Daley]

This is just another union buster canard obfuscated and perpetrated by people that hate unions.  If Bush gave money right now from TARP to bailout the auto companies, it would presumably be used in manufacturing new autos, designing new autos, buying parts and materials to build new autos, and paying the workers their wages.  The workers pay the UAW from their pay checks.  Once their work is done and they are paid for their labor, it is their money to give to their union, not the taxpayers.  The government isn't paying the UAW to run their union, the workers pay their union dues.  It really is a transparent red herring that union busters raise this.

By the same token, the corporate jets and such executive perks are part of the company being bailed out.  If they were owned by the execs, not the company, it would be the same as the UAW owning a flippin golf course, an extravagance!

That said, I would think that the membership themselves would question their international board of governance and investment boad for this sort of ownership in a loosing enterprise like a golf course.  But, one would have to think that this is no time to sell because of poor market conditions. 

There are at least two other golf courses that I can think of that are owned by union pension funds.  One is Halfmoon Bay owned by the plumbers international pension fund, if I'm not mistaken.  And there is one that I can't think of back east, maybe Long Island.  If I were a member of one of those unions, I'd be campaigning for an office in the union on a platform that it is probably ill spent investment of their funds to be involved in traditionally dicey golf course operations.  Now, if Halfmoon Bay is a very successful operation, and it give its union members a great deal, and makes good money off the public, then it is another good investment just like an office building or a corporate or government bond.  But, I'd be scrutinizing the proposition of a golf course. 

[Chuck Brown]

I've played it, a number of times.  It is not terribly far from Mr. Doak, and he's no doubt played it himself.

No matter what your political views, or your views of Michelle Malkin (I happen to like Michelle Malkin), this is a huge canard, and any good conservative ought to protest this hackneyed attempt to equate golf with some form of "reckless excess," even when the lunchbucket UAW is behind the poorly-alleged excess.

The course is built on a huge, rolling, very heavily-wooded inland part of the far northern tip of lower Michigan.  The land (several thousand acres) has, for decades, been union-owned, and is part of a very legitimate and useful union learning center and retreat.  In the mid-1990's, they hired Rees Jones to lay out an ambitious golf course for them.

The turf is not nearly as sandy as some nice Northern Michigan layouts and locations like Crystal Downs, or Forest Dunes, or a flock of others.  It is more of a dense hardwoods area, with more clay and compaction to the soil.

Here's the skinny on the Rees-results:

Since opening in 2000, the UAW golf course has piled up numerous awards.  Black Lake Golf Club placed 25th in Golf Digest's "100 Greatest Public Courses in America" 2005-2006 rankings. The course was also named one of the Top 50 public golf courses for women in the country by Golf for Women magazine.

Awards and Recognitions:

Golf Digest – No. 2 Best New Upscale Course in the U.S. in 2000. Currently, ranked #35 on America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses. 
Golf For Women – Top 100 Women – Friendly Courses in 2001. Currently, named one of the Top 50 Courses for Women. 
Golf Magazine – Top 10 You Can Play in 2000. No. 87 in Top 100 You Can Play in 2001. 
Certified by Audubon International, Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System and the Michigan State Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship Program.

Architecturally, it is like many other Rees Jones layouts.  I think it is a little more interesting, but no better a layout, than University Ridge, for our Wisconsin brethren.  It is a high-scale daily fee course for the public.  It is kind of isolated on the UAW property in central Northern Michigan, a bit of a drive from gold coast locations like Petoskey and Harbor Springs.

If the UAW were to try to sell the golf course now, they'd get pennies on the dollar for the value of the asset to them.  It is a dumb idea, is utterly irrelevant to the real trouble in the automotive industry, and I'd suggest to Michelle Malkin, if you'd like to do something productive, take a lesson from Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal and write about something like CAFE standards, or California's dumass idea of having separate state emissions standards, which no manufacturer can build to.