After years of economic woes, Oakmont Golf Club will move up on the market

Tom Woodrum’s house in Oakmont Village backs as much as the fourth hole of the Oakmont Golf Club, a 354-yard par four that has no longer been specifically appropriate to him over time. The green runs downhill, left to right. Woodrum doesn’t care to admit the wide variety of instances he’s watched his putts roll beyond the cup and stale the inexperienced. If your force ends up within the pine timber on the right, he warns, “you’re lifeless.” and but he’d omit that hollow if it were gone. In a flip of occasions that has rocked this 55-plus network of 4,700 humans, the golf club knowledgeable its 260 members in mid-February that it soon could be for sale. These days, one of the most popular sports on the self-described “energetic grownup community” is speculating on what turns into of the golf club, which includes two 18-hollow guides laid out over 225 acres inside the coronary heart of Oakmont Village.

Built-in 1964, the Oakmont Golf Club is an enterprise cut loose by the Oakmont Village Association. In a sobering memo despatched to his elements on March five, Association President Steve Spanier cut at once to the chase, recounting a presentation made to golfing club participants through Steve Ekovich, a senior vice chairman of the actual estate brokerage colossus Marcus & Millichap. Failed golf guides, Ekovich informed them, reduce domestic values with the aid of 20 to 30 percent for residences no longer at the golfing path, and an anticipated 30 to 40 percent for homes bordering the path. “The failure of the golf direction,” warned Spanier, “has the potential to reduce cumulative Oakmont property valuations through over half of one thousand million bucks.” The golf path debate is stoking passions in a community already famend for endeavor-related strife. In current years, clashes over a controversial, $310,000 pickleball complicated brought about the resignations of two association presidents, its standard supervisor, attorney, data era coordinator, and treasurer. At the height of that battle, a sergeant-at-arms turned into needed to preserve order at association meetings. In August 2017, then-Board President Ken Heyman discovered the severed head of a rat in a bag on his doorstep.

He resigned five months later. “The golfing membership trouble has the capability to dwarf pickleball in phrases of network polarization,” Spanier said. “But we’re causing now not to have that manifest.” Owned via its individuals, the significant majority of whom live within the village, the golf membership has misplaced money or slightly damaged even 4 of the ultimate six years, said its president, Gary Smith. It’s additionally carrying just over $3 million in lengthy-term debt. At the equal meeting whilst that imminent sale turned into introduced, club contributors have been asked to approve a one-time $750 evaluation on themselves. They did, and those funds at the moment are getting used to cowl last yr’s working deficit and pay past due payments to carriers, Smith said. The membership’s economic woes were no mystery. On Feb. 26, 2018, a standing room-simplest crowd crammed the village’s East Rec Center. The concern of the meeting: “Economic Benefits of the Golf Club to the Community of Oakmont.” Residents were reminded that similarly to boosting assets values, the courses provide drainage, scenic open space, and a hearth destroy. Then came the ask. To boost $1.5 million for sorely wished enhancements, residents had been requested to pay an extra five dollars a month for five years, a complete of $300. Branded a “bailout” by critics, the request becomes hastily rejected.

A yr later, the club is on the market, and the association on the cusp of losing manipulate of a large tract of land strolling via it. In Spanier’s worst-case scenario, the golfing membership is going bankrupt. It will become the belongings of a coverage organization, which in flip sells the land to an actual estate developer. Fairways and veggies disappear, changed using condos and townhouses. That five-bucks-a-month appeal is placing many Oakmonters, on reflection, as incredibly reasonable — that sum of $1.Five million, by the way, is precisely the amount the club can be requiring searching for what you offer to commit to spending to improve the centers — normally the Quail Inn restaurant and dinner party facilities, “which haven’t been upgraded in two decades,” Smith said. “If a new customer doesn’t decide to that,” he said, “I doubt very critically club could approve the sale.”

“Otherwise,they’re just shopping for the same issues we’ve got.” Meanwhile, Spanier and the affiliation’s board are looking to parent out a manner to maintain the golfing membership within the circle of relatives. In its March 13 meeting, “the board agreed to preserve to significantly explore, with alacrity and thoroughness, the option of purchasing the OGC,” Spanier shared in an e-mail. “We’ll continue our due diligence until we determine whether or not to make a suggestion.” To bid, or no longer to bid? That’s the query dealing with — and dividing — Oakmonters, who pay $ seventy-five a month to use the village’s services, consisting of swimming pools, tennis courts, health centers, an auditorium, and library. Count Woodrum, whose outside is the fourth fairway, is inclined to pony up a bit greater a month to control the future of the golf path.

“It doesn’t make any feeling that we would deliver that assets up to an out of doors developer or maybe any other golfing path operator without a fight.” How about villagers who don’t play golf or stay along the direction. What do they stand to lose? “About $a hundred 000 of fairness of their house,” he said. Skeptics suspect that reports of plunging domestic values have to the golf path visit weeds — as has happened in latest years to golf equipment in Petaluma and Wikiup — are substantially exaggerated. Others feel strongly that the affiliation has no enterprise propping up a failing membership. “The truth is,” writes Bruce Bon within the Oakmont Observer, a web neighborhood guide, “maximum folks didn’t pass here due to the golf guides and might be little affected if they have been replaced through different proper open-area uses. Unlike wasteland groups, wherein the most effective massive appeal is golf, our vicinity in the Valley of the Moon is most efficient, with or without golf.”

Harry Polleydisagreed. “I’m now not a golfer,” stated Polley, sitting in his Jeep outside the Activities Center, “but if I needed to pay more to maintain the golf club right here, I would.” People transferring to the village “want to suppose they’re getting into a vibrant network,” he said. A failed golfing path “sends an extraordinary message.” Should the golf direction fail, Woodrum said, “the stench of failure attaches to Oakmont.” Waiting for her flip at a nearby shuffleboard court docket, Joanne Nez said she’d be OK with kicking in “an extra ten or twenty dollars a month” to store the golfing club, but handiest if it allowed Oakmonters to go for evening walks around its perimeter, and exercise now prohibited. Regardless of what occurs, she said, “I just hope they find a way to hold it green.”