Pinehurst Inc. can’t seem to stay out of the news these days, even when it isn’t trying to get there.

At Monday’s Pinehurst Village Council meeting it was announced that the village had hired the law firm Kirkland & Ellis of Washington D.C., to defend the name "Pinehurst" against trademark claims by Pinehurst Inc.

On the same day, the council also made public some private documents, originating from Pinehurst Inc., that had recently come into the council’s possession and had caused concern.

The following day an article appeared in the News & Observer of Raleigh, hinting that the resort might sue the N.C. Department of Transportation over the sale of road signs with the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club logo that were put up for the week of the Open. Standard procedure for DOT is to sell any surplus at auction.

At Monday’s Village Council meeting, Mayor Virginia Fallon made public the confidential Pinehurst Inc. documents that she had been given, and made a statement expressing her concern.

"I think I had a legal obligation to make it public," she told The Pilot Tuesday. "We have to know what’s planned and the people have a right to make a choice about their future and this certainly looks like the future’s being planned."

The mayor said she was not at liberty to disclose the source of the private documents.

The discovered papers are a briefing document and the resulting notes of an "Envisioning Session" held at the resort last October 28 and 29. Simply put, the notes are from the resort’s strategic planning session, a meeting it holds every year.

What made this last session unusual is that the resort invited members of the community to join, including Richard Wescott, a member of the Village Council, and David Woronoff, publisher of The Pilot.

Westcott was unable to attend the meeting for personal reasons but was sent a copy of both the briefing document and the subsequent notes taken at the session.

Some of the questions include: "What are the appeals of Pinehurst?," "What is missing at Pinehurst from the perspective of the family visitor?," and "How would you move Pinehurst to the next level of quality and experience in the following areas?"

This last question raised points of concern for the council because the notes include a suggestion involving "control of the core village: retail; F&B; entertainment," and another suggestion of "control all elements of a resort village" and "purchase businesses in village as they become available and operate under existing names," to name a few.

But the one question that seemed to create the most concern is, "If you could create a village at Pinehurst, what would it look like?" Five different village designs are then described in the notes of the envisioning session.

Beth Kocher, executive vice president of Pinehurst Inc., says there is nothing sinister about the meeting or the notes generated from it, nor was there a shroud of secrecy that prevented the resort from disclosing information.

"I don’t know how they can begin to say that anything was secretive," says Kocher. "That is ludicrous." She points out the fact that a council member was invited to the session and was even sent copies of the ‘secret’ documents back in November.

Kocher says she is puzzled as to why this has only now become an issue, since the session was months ago and the council presumably had access to the documents then. She insists that there was nothing odd or malevolent about the envisioning session.

"This is a common business practice," says Kocher. "Most companies do this, especially the large ones. The hospital is no different."

If anyone is panicked about suggestions of designing a "new village," Kocher insists that these sessions demand brainstorming and the ideas generated at them are simply that — ideas.

"Generally you throw 100 ideas on the wall and if you come up with four, you’re lucky," Kocher says. "You’re invited to think outside of the box at these sessions."

The village plans to ask the resort for a copy of the final report, which the resort has already stated it has no intention to do.

On a completely different front, The News & Observer ran an article Tuesday in its "Under the Dome" column suggesting that there were problems between Pinehurst Inc. and the DOT over the signs posted for the U.S. Open.

Typically the state sells any surplus at auction, and the article suggests that legal issues could arise if DOT sells the Pinehurst-logo signs.

That is perhaps a bit misleading. The resort and DOT have not even spoken to each other on the issue.

The signs have, however, attracted a lot of attention and interest from tourists and members of the community. Apparently, folks want to take them home as a souvenir, says Bill Rosser, a DOT division engineer based in Aberdeen.

"Even before the practice rounds we had people coming in here wanting to know about those signs," says Rosser. "This logo was very popular with everyone, even the thieves."

Theft of the signs seems to have become a big problem, despite efforts to make them more difficult to pilfer. Of the approximately 300 signs that originally went out on the roads, only 39 are currently in DOT’s possession.

Another six are at the sheriff’s department. They were recovered from the back of a pickup truck that had been stopped for another reason.

At present there are about 70 or 80 names on a list of individuals that want to purchase one of the 45 remaining signs.

Rosser says the problem has grown to the degree where it will take special handling to solve. "It’s gotten to the point that our secretary of transportation is going to have to decide what to do," he said.