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News | National News | Local Weather          Holly Realty Mid-Carolina Physician Org.  Send this page to a friend -- Email the Editor  Club at Longleaf: New Owners Hope to Get Into Green BY MATTHEW MORIARTY:
Staff Writer The new owners of the Club at Longleaf believe they can turn
the troubled club around like a golfer holing a bunker shot to save par.
Just like the shot, getting Longleaf on to the green is going to be tough.
The club has a fractured relationship with some of its members and was
obtained at auction after being unable to emerge from bankruptcy. It’s
starting out in a hole because Dan Maples, the previous owner, is still
going to own 45 percent of the club, a fact that upsets some of the
members, many of whom have already quit. But the people joining Maples in
the new ownership group say that they can get things straightened out
because they’ve done it before. The new owner, Longleaf Florida, is a
subsidiary of Sound Golf Enterprises. In addition to Maples, Longleaf
Florida is owned by Frank Hayden, Jim Manley and David Steen, who all live
in Florida. Those three took over a club in Tampa, Fla. called Emerald
Greens and Country Club on Sept. 30, 2003. The course was in disrepair,
the membership had dwindled and the previous owner had “run it into the
ground,” Hayden said. “We knew we were going to have to redo everything,”
Hayden adds. They hired Maples to redesign all 27 holes, bulldozed the
clubhouse, and started with a clean slate. “We only kept the cart barn,”
Hayden said. “We were starting over.” Now the club has 720 members most of
whom are benefiting from increased property values. According to Manley, a
lawyer for the members recently told the Tampa zoning board that the
relationship between the new owners and the members “should be used as a
case study as to how a business deals with the community.” In December,
while Maples was working on the Emerald Greens redesign, he mentioned to
the others that he was having a problem with his club in Southern Pines,
Longleaf. Maples was embroiled in a lawsuit some of the members had filed
against Maples Properties, the company that owned Longleaf, and a lawsuit
Maples had filed against the original developer. In the midst of all that,
Maples Properties filed for bankruptcy. The club was set to be auctioned
off. “Jim and I decided to assist him and ourselves and take it on as
another business venture,” Hayden said. They also decided that they wanted
Maples to continue to be a part of the club. “He operated it for 16 years
and wasn’t going to yield anything,” Hayden said. “It was kind of
bothersome. ... We wanted him staying in the deal. He has an expertise
neither Jim or I have.” Sound Golf came in with the highest bid at $2.4
million and the deal closed Jan. 24. The Club at Longleaf will undergo
some changes, but the new owners hope that the membership will be pleased
with them. For one thing, they are doing away with a $35 monthly minimum
at the restaurant that Maples had instituted — something that irked some
of the members. They are also making the club completely private. It had
been semi-private, which Manley said is the same thing as being public.
The new owners have put together a member plan and have already met with
the remaining membership to tout their vision of the club. The club will
allow nonresident members, as long as they live within a five minute
drive. Also, the club will continue to bring in package play from
tourists. “This is a golf Mecca,” Hayden said. “It will give them an
opportunity to play a good quality private course. And they get to see a
community like Longleaf.” One of the first tasks will be to erase three
years of disrepair from the course. The new owners said it is
understandable that members would be mad at Maples, though they said
reduction of profit margins due to outside forces caused the disrepair.
“It’s Maples’ golf course,” Hayden said. “The members don’t want to be
bothered by anything except the play.” The owners have hired a golf
professional, Jim Alley. He will be in charge of public relations and golf
and will be the general manager of the club. They will rely on him to talk
to the membership. “He’s a talker,” Hayden said. “But he’s also a good
listener. He hears what they have to say.” Most estimations have about
one-third of the membership resigning during the course or as a result of
the events surrounding the bankruptcy. Hayden believes that some of them
felt they had to resign or they would automatically have to pay fees on
the new club. “We hope we can entice some of them to come back,” he said.
The remaining members who continued to pay their dues are to be treated as
charter members of the new club, he said. Prior to buying Longleaf, Sound
Golf managed to get $1.5 million from eight investors. It borrowed another
$1.5 million. The purchase wiped out $2.4 million, leaving $600,000 for
capital improvements. Their calculations tell them that $1.8 million is
the break-even point. “People ask, ‘How are you ever going to make it?’”
Hayden said. “We need to get everybody on the same page. We need to heal
the community of the animosities. We all have to live together.” The new
property developer, CMC Hartland Partners VII of Chicago, is excited,
Hayden says. “We are hoping by us bringing the golf course back to the
center of the community it will stimulate sales,” he said. Hayden is
interested in purchasing some land from the developer to build some
condos. But it’s fine if it never happens, he said. In fact, though they
would seem to be in the bunker, they don’t sound worried. “There is a lot
of opposition,” Manley says. “But it’s the same old story.”  © 2000, 2001 The Pilot Newspaper All stories, images and contents of this
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