A golf rebound in Southwest Florida

Published: Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 6:45 p.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 6:45 p.m.

The builder's plans for an 18-hole, championship golf course at its Esplanade community in Lakewood Ranch come as several Southwest Florida courses ? especially newer links with expensive clubhouses and other amenities ? have struggled amid the prolonged economic downturn.

?For a long time now, builders have been hesitant about starting new projects and with good reason ? there was too much unsold inventory,? said John Brady, founder and editor of Top Retirements.com, a website that ranks retirement communities.

?The bloom has been off the rose for golf courses as well ? too many of them exist and there's declining interest in the game,? Brady said. ?Many courses have closed or gone public, and while builders like Pulte and Del Webb have been building new communities with extensive amenities, they usually have not been with golf.?

The proposed Taylor Morrison course would be the centerpiece of a 400-acre, 800-home addition to the builder's ?active resort-style? community.

For its part, the homebuilder maintains that the Great Recession has created a void that the Esplanade Golf and Country Club at Lakewood Ranch will fill.

?There are fewer golf courses to play. We see that as an opportunity to meet a niche that there will be demand for,? said Cammie Longenecker, a Taylor Morrison vice president of sales and marketing.

Active boomers ? part of the cohort of 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 ? will be the target market.

?We do see a large percentage of our buyers will be near retirement age or will be retiring soon,? Longenecker said.

Esplanade is one of two new golf-course projects that Taylor Morrison is planning on the west coast of Florida.

The other is a 1,100-unit development near Naples recently approved by Collier County, said Tony Squitieri, the company's vice president of land resources.

Golf is a $25 billion-a-year sport in the United States, but the number of golfers has dropped from roughly 30 million seven years ago to about 26 million nowadays, according to the National Golf Foundation.

The number of rounds played, meanwhile, fell from 518 million in 2000 to 463 million last year.

As a result, more than 150 courses shut down last year alone, leaving nearly 16,000 open nationwide.

?Golf as an activity hasn't gone away,? said Gene Warren, a principal at TW + A Research, a Phoenix-based retirement community consulting firm. ?It is just not the activity that it used to be. It has diminished somewhat.?

But he concurs with Taylor Morrison's decision to create amenities with affluent, active boomers in mind.

?Everything we see, in our analysis of what the boomers are looking for, are these activity opportunities ? walking trails, bike trails, lakes where they can fish or boat,? Warren said. ?Their parents wanted a quiet sedentary life, but the boomers are not yet ready to deal with old age.?

From a development perspective, a prominent Taylor Morrison competitor in Southwest Florida agrees that golf courses are once again in vogue.

?Golf is back, especially in a bundled format,? said Pat Neal, a Lakewood Ranch-based developer, referring to buyers' desire for communities that offer a variety of activities.

Neal said that six courses closed in the Sarasota-Manatee region during the recession, which has created an opportunity for builders.

?There are still 78 million boomers who stopped purchasing during this housing crisis for six or seven years, and their biological clocks are ticking,? Neal said. ?So we are full of customers.?

This spring, Neal acquired the Boca Royale Golf & Country Club in Englewood, which opened in 1977. Residents there pay monthly assessments of $429 for family golf.

The Esplanade course will be the region's first since Royal Lakes opened in Lakewood Ranch in early 2008, following a trio of courses ? at The Founders Club, the Concession and a course for Ritz-Carlton Sarasota members and guests. Those three debuted during the real estate boom of the mid-2000s.

Taylor Morrison will limit the number of members ? Longenencker could not say to what level ? and the members will pay annual assessments to support upkeep.

A 12,000-square-foot clubhouse with dining, tennis courts and other amenities also is planned.

?No one has built a golf course that I know of in the past few years,? said Keith Pope, chief executive of Pope Golf of Sarasota, which will manage the new Taylor Morrison course. ?It is all tied to home sales and we are seeing an uptick in the housing market, so it makes sense.?

At Esplanade, golf membership will stay with the home, ensuring that the course is properly maintained, Pope said.

But even well-planned courses became victims during he Great Recession, proponents acknowledge.

Most notably, the high-end Legacy course, designed by Arnold Palmer and opened in Lakewood Ranch in 1997, was seized by its lender in 2009 when the former owner could not pay a $7 million debt.

A moderate golf course costs $6 million to $8 million to develop, Neal said, and often hundreds of thousands of dollars more to maintain.

?They overbuilt golf courses in the past,? said Alan Anderson, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association Manatee-Sarasota. ?Nonetheless, it is a great amenity for the residents to have at their disposal.?

Anderson and others also said that Taylor Morrison must have conducted extensive market research before committing to the Esplanade course.

?You don't just haphazardly plop down the millions of dollars to build a golf course and just hope for the best,? Anderson said, noting that Esplanade will be the only course north of State Road 70 in Manatee County.

Warren, the Phoenix consultant, agrees.

?They know what they are doing.?

Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121115/article/121119703

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