Source: The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
The sales pitch brims with optimism.
The only Scottish links-style golf course in the region. Panoramic mountain and water views. Designed by a household name in golf. Bordering a protected wildlife habitat. Created so no housing or modern growth will encroach on its serenity.
Golf carts feature on-board GPS to pinpoint your next shot.
"This place rocks!" proclaims the Golf.com review.
Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place?
No. The Auld Course in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista. Built in 2001 - and now bankrupt.
The California bank that lent $ 6.2 million toward construction foreclosed on the $ 16 million course more than a year ago and has tried twice to sell it at a loss - unsuccessfully, according to a recent report in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
For Pierce County skeptics, the financial failure of The Auld Course bolsters their misgivings over investing $ 20 million in public money in the 18-hole Chambers Bay Golf Course. A concerned reader clipped the San Diego newspaper article and mailed it to me as a prophetic warning of doom for the folly that he believes Chambers Bay to be.
For the Pierce County government team working to remake the old gravel pit into a picturesque golfing paradise, The Auld Course news flash means coping with another irrelevant load of exasperating questions.
"Every time there's a golf course in trouble in the United States, it is compared to Chambers Bay. Anytime there's a golf course doing well in the United States it is not compared to Chambers Bay," said Tony Tipton, Pierce County's golf course project manager.
That's a given when elected officials gamble with public money - even when the odds of winning stand largely in the public's favor, as the odds do with Chambers Bay.
Yet considering the state of the U.S. golfing industry, the unfavorable comparisons will keep coming.
In 2004, 63 golf courses closed across the country, including three in Washington, according to National Golf Foundation statistics released last month. Another 68 closed the year before.
Meanwhile, golf course openings have dropped dramatically since 398 hit the market in 1998. Last year, just 150 courses opened, including two in Washington. This year, the foundation predicts, another 150 will open.
Sounds ominous. But the statistics also hint recreational golf might have bottomed out. The number of golf rounds played last year increased by 0.7 percent - minuscule but the first yearly increase in the 21st century. Better yet, rounds played in the Washington-Oregon-Alaska region grew by 3.5 percent last year - among the highest rates in the country.
Feel better? Well, hold on.
Of the 150 courses opening this year, three of four will open as part of residential housing projects and most of the rest are expansions of existing golf complexes, said Jeff Woolson, senior vice president and international golf course specialist for real estate mega-firm CB Richard Ellis.
"The days of building a core golf course (like The Auld Course) for the sake of building a beautiful golf course are over," Woolson said.
"Over the next several years you're going to see a lot of foreclosures on golf courses as lenders have to come in and take them over and sell them at a loss," he predicted.
But by 2008 - a year after Chambers Bay opens - the United States should see a golf resurgence, Woolson said.
"Everybody's got their eye on the baby boomers retiring, and 2008 is when the first wave (of boomers) hits," he said. "It's widely felt in the golf business that golf hasn't dwindled in popularity. It's just that people are working extra hard right now and don't have the time or money to play."
Woolson also is brokering the fire sale of The Auld Course near San Diego and said Pierce County's upscale arrangement looks more defensible.
"If they're happy with breaking even, and they're getting a place to dump their (treated wastewater) off, and they're doing it for the tourism benefits, it's probably not a bad deal," Woolson said. "The $ 20 million number may not be so bad."
That's what the proponents of Chambers Bay have argued and why they get slightly riled by isolated comparisons to failed courses.
"Just as one department store is not like another," Tipton said, "you just can't compare every golf course.
"We've been saying this since Day One: You have to be very careful when you're building a golf course here. If you're not building a high-end, quality golf course that fills a niche in your market, you have to be very, very careful. Not that we can have 100 percent certainty, even with a high-end course, but it's where we see the successes in the industry.
"If you're just thinking about another golf course, you probably shouldn't build it," Tipton continued. "From what we can tell, The Auld Course is nothing special. It's in an area with plenty of other nice golf courses. But it's not designed to hold a PGA Tour event (like Chambers Bay is). It's not sitting adjacent to the water (like Chambers Bay is). It's a links-style course (like Chambers Bay is) but only because there are no trees. . . .
"It's just not filling the bill with the type of quality and experience we're building here."
You might want to keep that monologue on tape, Tony. You'll probably get plenty more chances to replay it.