Saw this on another board...

[Gary_K]

I don't know if this is ture or not and I haven't seen a post about this on here, but I saw the following post on another golf board:


"Many of you in the Northeast Maryland Southeastern Pa Delaware area are going to be chagrined to hear this.

Beechtree in Aberdeen is closing and being turned into 700 town homes.

A friend of mine who has been a "member" (they don't really have memberships, but you can buy packages that guarantee tee times at substantial discounts) there for the last 3 years told me that today. The announcement was made to the staff at a meeting last week. It is unlikely to happen this year, but is supposedly definitely slated to happen next year.

Beechtree is an excellent Tom Doak golf course that give great great value and it is just really sad to have such an excellent course closing in the near future."


It wasn't posted on April 1st, so I don't know what to think.

Gary K.

[Joe Bausch]

This would be very sad to hear.  I'm not from that area but have played B'tree a few times now.  I would not expect that land to be so valuable at this time.  Twenty years from now?  Yeah, perhaps.

I had heard rumors that the owner is 'interesting' and that he and Doak may not have seen eye to eye. Perhaps all this fits into a tidy little package.

[Mark Bourgeois]

It's a huge growth area due to the BRAC upgrade of Aberdeen Proving Ground; however, it'd be a big surprise to see them get anything done in this economy.

While there's plenty of land undeveloped in the area most of it doesn't have water and sewer.  A golf course owner around there doesn't need any imagination to see the value of the land he's sitting on.

No doubt he can wait until the economy turns -- the driver of the conversion is not the housing bubble but the long-term impact of a major relocation of people to that area.

Sad.

Mark

PS My first thought was the poster confused this Beechtree with a new development outside Washington, DC, of the same name.  An announcement made to the staff, which heard even second hand still seems pretty strong, put paid to that hopeful notion.

[Tom_Doak]

I haven't heard anything about it.  Doesn't mean it's not true, but there are lots of unfounded rumors in the golf business, too ... I've heard at least ten different rumors about the sale of High Pointe over the years, but it's still owned by the same family who hired me.

I don't know where Joe heard his rumors, but although Jim Knott was and is an interesting guy, we always got along reasonably well.  Still, he's a money guy, and if the golf course has continued to perform not as well as anticipated, and there's more money to be made by turning the course to housing, he might do it ... the novelty of owning a golf course has surely worn off by this point, and there aren't many buyers out there.

[Cory Lewis]

I read this and it disturbed me so much I emailed my old boss at Beechtree.  The rumors about the course closing are not true.  It is true that the owner is going through the process with the county for a possible future development.  But he has not made any decision yet, he is simply putting himself in a position to make a move if he wants to, which could be in a couple years or never. 

I really wish people would stop spreading these wild rumors.  Because everything is public in the planning process, people will believe whatever they want. 

Beechtree is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mark Bourgeois]

Cory,

Is Beechtree inside the Aberdeen city limits?  If it isn't, in that area a property can be rezoned only once every five years.

I was thinking that might have been what's happening here.  If the property originally was zoned in 1998 or 1999, then this year or next would be the rezoning year.

But that doesn't sound like good news to me, either.  What happens if the property gets rezoned for the next five year window as residential?

It's one thing if going through the process was more of a "cover your bases" kind of action, but it's not like the demand for 700 condos is going away anytime soon.

Once he gets the rezoning, very likely the pressure to do something with it will build quickly once the economy turns.

All IMHO!

Mark