A Contemporary Golf Course Development Saga

[Chris Buie]

Many of the dynamics that play into building courses these days are present in this story currently unfolding in the Pinehurst area.  It is an interesting mixture where politics, environmentalists, economics, general impact on the community, the relationship between building courses and housing developments, etc, all intermingle.  I would think this is a fairly representative story of the forces a golf course architect would have to contend with in America today.  Even though there is more to the story - as there usually is - the writer did a pretty good job telling it.
You may find it a worthy read.

http://www.thepilot.com/news/2011/jan/21/county-tables-action-on-pine-forest-development/

[Bruce Wellmon]

Chris,
        This is next door to Dormie, but Dormie is private and Pine Forest is a resort is what I gathered.
         Competing therefore against Pinehurst Resort.
         Has the local economy been that strong to support a new resort?

[Chris Buie]

Well Bruce, the area has a bit of an immunity to the economic dilemma due to something called BRAC.  That means base realignment - which means military bases are shut down in some places and the personnel are consolidated at a handful of bases.  Ft. Bragg is literary next door to the Pinehurst area and thousands of soldiers (Special Forces primarily) are moving to the area.  This keeps the housing market and other businesses propped up to an extent.  Is the area economically capable of supporting another course?  Well, I can only say that many of the courses are having serious difficulty staying afloat.  This branches off into another layer of the overall situation.  I'm not referring to Dormie here, but let's say an upper tier private course is under economic pressure.  One way of dealing with that is to get new members.  They may not be in a position to hand pick newer members.  What if those new members don't embody the characteristics that the current members pay a great deal of money to consort with?  Will they continue to pay the considerable fees to maintain their membership there?  Or will the ultra refined Mrs. Magnate-Wife look up from her creme brulée one day and see a not so refined new members wife wearing gaudy clothes and talking way too loud and say "oh dear, this won't do"?
I find the overall scenario quite fascinating and somewhat scary at the same time.  

[corey miller]

Sounds like a sh** show in Pinehurst.  Sad to say but these guys are totally sucking wind.  Seemed like a good idea, bad timing? poor business model? 

I get it.  Develop more golf while the course you and the creditors already own and which is next door is sinking with ~20 members?

Seems to be a rezoning/approval play that might improve the land values prior to the inevitable fire sale.

And I thought the rule was it was the 3rd owner that makes all the money in Golf/re development.  This might not even be the case here.  Perhaps the fourth owner?

[Lou_Duran]

Is it the appropriate role of government to regulate the supply of housing, golf courses, and other land uses?

If so, how does it sort out which public's interests will be protected?  Are the interests of those who have currently developed property somehow superior to those of raw land owners, renters who would like to own, or, say, snowbirds who would like to move to the area?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Thankfully the government is involved in the regulation of land uses, housing supplies, and other commercial construction.

Pinehurst and the surrounding area isn't a megalopolis, zoning laws aren't the product of some nameless or faceless entity, they are adopted by local voters who have chosen to limit and/or regulate development within the confines of their community.    

In our town it's what keeps an auto junkyard away from a residential neighborhood and a natural gas plant away from a school. It's what forces developers to make safe roadways within a development and forces them to construct such roads to meet the town requirements for any road that will eventually be maintained by the taxpayers.

No one who owns property in our town is stopped from asking for any change of zoning or for any non-conforming use. That's why my neighbor was allowed by the ZBA to open a small salon within the residential district and another to open an office that employs a half dozen local folks. Their requests were made public and anyone in town had the chance to speak for or against the proposals, with abutting neighbors having the highest priority.  

Our water company is a private/town merger and it leases wells found on town property. It knows the recharge rate of the wells and how much water it can pump and treat in a given amount of time. Unbridled development would put an end to the smooth operation of this facility and it would likely have a drastic effect on existing property owners, i.e my home isn't worth squat without water.

Government isn't perfect, and there are abuses, but local governments help to preserve, protect, and aid the efficient development of their communities, a task which is undertaken for the greater good of all its residents.

[Chris Buie]

Generalizing here, I'm always interested in the balance - or imbalance - between competing interests.  Where do you draw the line?  It has to be nuanced in the end I would think.
Development is fine - and inevitable - if it is done well.  If it is not done well then it will significantly downgrade the quality of life that has been painstakingly pieced together over decades.  Not ok.  I'm not referring to Pine Forest here, but people and businesses are constantly trying to insert monstrosities in the Southern Pines and Pinehurst area.  Let me come to your beautiful area and make it worse. Occasionally they are successful and they chip away at the quality of life.  Not ok - and they do not appear to care in the slightest at the negative effect on the community.  Tourism is the lifeblood of the place and the tourists are not going to come here if the place loses its charm.
Mainly the councils have stopped the steady stream of bad ideas.  They are in an exquisitely precarious position because overbearing regulation can be just as negative as bad developments.  Without a doubt there can be overzealous protectors of a town.  I've seen that as well and that is just as off putting as brazen interlopers.
The interplay of all these different elements is an interesting and very important part of life.  I think it is possible to blend the rights of the individual or business with the rights of the established group.  Not easy and not perfect but as Jim just showed a reasonable accommodation can usually be met if reasonable people work together in good faith.
Well, that is my take anyway.  

[Tim Nugent]

NIMBY sydrome is alive and well.  I always find it interesting that the biggest objectors are peole who have done precisely what they are objecting to.  Afterall, would they even be there to object if someone didn't already develop their house, build their road so their polluting cars can drive on it?

Reading between the lines ( and having been in this circus before), it seems that the developer is being environmentally proactive and sensitive but that isn't the real issue, just a strawman.  The real issue is growth.  The opposers don't want any.  But they are the 1st to complain about no jobs, high taxes etc.  So what if Long-leaf Pines were cut down for my house, you can't cut down any for yours because we have so few left.

And this red herring about a private sewage treatment plant?  That's because the developer plans to use the effluent water to irrigate the golf courses and NOT discharge it in the nearest stream.

Why was the Dormie allowed to be built?  Maybe because no residential or as alluded to earlier no Resort competition was part of the plan?

Thanks to Chris, the Treehouse get's to see what one has to put up with in order to get something built.  It isn't as easy as just designing something.  It's been said that the actual design portion of a project can be less than 30% of what goes into making it happen.

Didn't we just hear the President last night say that we need to reduce Government regulations that hinder businesses?  And you wonder why there is no job growth?  Where will Pinehurst be when all those tourists stop coming because they don't have the money?

[Jeff Loh]

Interesting that the "owner" of Dormie is behind Pine Forest. Would getting Pine Forest built help the Dormie club in any way? Sewers, roads, etc.? I was at Dormie in early January on a 66 degree day and my wife and I were the only ones on the golf course. Does Dormie need to "piggyback" on Pine Forest to be successful on its own?

[Tim Nugent]

Interesting that the "owner" of Dormie is behind Pine Forest. Would getting Pine Forest built help the Dormie club in any way? Sewers, roads, etc.? I was at Dormie in early January on a 66 degree day and my wife and I were the only ones on the golf course. Does Dormie need to "piggyback" on Pine Forest to be successful on its own?

THat's probably a question only the owners can answer, but, it is a private club. And private clubs need members.  In a place like Pinehurst, that means out-of-town members are probably solicitated as those locals who wish to be a member at a club probably already are.  So, it stands to reason that the developer, who has more than enough land, would probably like to be able to offer on property 2nd houses for those new members.
That said, it probably doesn't "need" a resort course to piggyback off of.  It just needs members - several hundred.

[Jeff Loh]

Tim
Good point. At 40k/220 month dues for a National Member that pretty much eliminates moi, as much as I loved the golf course. Anyone know their "game plan" for attracting locals/nationals?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
What you are forgetting is that it isn't some outside entity that is deciding the fate of these developers. Yes, there are certain state and federal issues that have to be dealt with, but this is people in a community who are objecting to what the development group is putting forth.

All the questions that are being asked about traffic, water and sewer are valid. Let me ask you this - say the project gets approved and infrastructure is put into place. A few houses go up, and after a year or two there might be 20 or 30 or more homes built. At the start of the third year the developer goes bust. If he does go belly-up it's more than likely that the golf course will soon follow suit. Where's the effluent going then? Who's going to maintain the multi-million dollar sewer system that was built? Who is going to maintain the roads, clean the storm drains, keep bulbs in the streetlights, etc. Twenty or thirty, even 50 homeowners will not be able to afford to do that. They will be loudly petitioning the village to assume the responsibility for it, and those costs get passed onto every taxpayer in the district. The sewer issue isn't a red herring at all, especially if the development goes down the toilet.

NIMBY is the red herring here. There will always be a vocal opposition of naysayers, but people in a community are more likely to accept development in their backyard as a whole if they believe that it fits into the picture they have drawn of their community. Developers do not have carte blanche to foist their projects upon a village or town without first proving to these folks that their plans will have positive long term effects for the area.

The American way of life has been built around our towns, villages, and cities. It sounds totally ass-backwards to me to hear people say that the folks who built them and live in them shouldn't have the right to judge what's in their best interests when it comes to development.  

[Tim Nugent]

Jim, sounds like you're reading from the NIMBY playbook.  What if this, what if that...  1st off, the Dormie could handle al the effluent - at 300/gal/day/unit that's only 9,000 gal/day. That's a total of 300 minutes of 1 golf course sprinkler of about enough for one golf hole.

What if any developer goes under?  Look around the country and you'll see many such instances and without any golf course attached. ANd I don't even know if they are proposing a passive or active system.  Usually, issues pertaining to infrastrucure ownership and maintenance are handled in Development Agreements.  As long as the development conforms to the regions long-range plan, it should not be held up. Now,if it doesn't and a landowner wishes to have the long-range plan ammended, well that opens up Pandora's Box.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
I don't read from anyone's 'playbook'.

There's a club down the road from me that had the same sewer issues raised. The town is not in any position to maintain it and staff it if the developer defaults.

This isn't a small plant at the North Carolina site, it will service 700 homes, 300 hotel rooms, and various commercial outlets. Then there's the issue of water, and the drawing of up to 1/2 million gals per day. That's up to 500,000 'in' and 500,000 'out', rain or shine, hot or cold. Perhaps the two courses can handle up to 250,000 gals each per day, maybe not.  
Even if the developers pay for piping the water to the development, it still puts a burden on the town to produce more. Pumps work longer, filtration units work longer, employees work longer, and the recharge capabilities of the source must also be considered.

There are the traffic issues which might neccessitate upgrading the infrastructure in other parts of the area and environmental concerns have been raised. That's the purpose of careful planning and zoning, avoiding the Pandora's Box moments which could have a negative effect on all the residents who have chosen to make the area their home.





 
 

[Jeff Loh]

Interesting "what ifs" but I am curious if this area "needs" another 36 holes of golf. i've heard The Pit is about to close and Pine Needles has started to accept "members." Is there are banker out there right now who would green light this project? And if it's private money what do they know that most others are missing?