Investors snag Western Golf

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A group of private investors based in Southern California, including former western operations executive Bobby Heath, acquired Phoenix, Ariz.-based Western Golf Properties Inc., an 18-year-old management and development company, last month. Financial terms were not disclosed.

As a result, the company planned to relocate its headquarters to Santa Ana location.

The new owners selected Heath to become the company’s president, effective in March. Heath, who will replace Western Golf founder Joe Black, said he hopes to guide the company through what are rough times for the golf industry.

“We are faced with an increasingly competitive environment at each property, making the focus on driving revenue paramount, while adjusting operating costs as necessary to achieve net operating income,” Heath said. “That being said, my vision is to infuse a heightened level of business and marketing savvy into our current management style.”

Officials at Western Golf declined to discuss the transaction in detail before Golf Course News went to press. In a statement, the company said its long-term focus will continue to be on driving revenue at the property level, while assuming a more aggressive growth strategy. Part of this strategy is to take equity positions in deals as the right opportunities present themselves.

“We understand how the golf business has changed over the last few years. Owners need partners in their business, in addition to operators,” Heath said. “We intend go focus our growth on course owners who want long-term vision and support from an established, sound business network.”

The exact reasons behind the sale are not clear, but Western Golf is currently one of the defendants, along with Thunderbirds Golf Course in Phoenix, in a pending $20 million lawsuit filed by the family of 15-year-old Nils Beeman. Beeman died last July after contracting a virus suspected to be linked to water-handling procedures at Western Golf-managed Thunderbirds. Last August, 84 people in Maricopa County contracted the Norwalk Virus, with the common denominator being the water at Thunderbirds. In November, the medical examiner’s office determined the cause of Beeman’s death was asphyxia due to vomiting caused by the virus, making him the lone casualty of the outbreak.

His death led to widespread changes in the way water is handled on golf courses, not only locally, but nationwide. However, the negative press generated by the incident led to severely decreased rounds at the course, which was sold to a pair of local businessmen for $4.8 million in a foreclosure auction last December (GCN, Feb. 2003).

Western Golf first became affiliated with Thunderbirds prior to its opening in 2001. The company served as a construction consultant for the course, which was designed by PGA Tour Design Services Inc. with cooperative efforts of local professional golfers Tom Lehman, Howard Twitty and Billy Mayfair.

Intrawest Golf took over management of the course when the course’s lender, Bank One Corp., foreclosed on the property in September for defaulting on a $6.6 million loan, but the new owners ended that contract at the time of the sale and said they plan to run the course themselves as MGC Properties LLC.