August 9 — Owner Edward Mingolla has hung the “For Sale” sign on Pleasant Valley Country Club, the venerable site of many LPGA and PGA Tour events.
Mingolla, who has not returned repeated requests for comment, wants $7 million for the Sutton, Mass.-based course, according to a “confidential” online listing by Sawyer Resort & Golf Advisors LLC of Greenwich, Conn. The listing, which
included only the club’s address, 95 Armsby Road, but an accompanying map pinpointed Pleasant Valley.
Uncertain future. Rumors of the nearly 40-year-old club’s dire financial straits have circulated among the membership. Mingolla, who’s reportedly $6 million in debt, met with members last week, telling them that the facility’s future would depend on them attracting new affiliates and functions, investing in the club (members had bandied about the need to pony up an additional $2,500 per member), and perhaps, selling the operation to a group of members, according to the Worcester Telegram.
Whispers of Pleasant Valley’s upcoming demise was news to assistant pro Dave Bingham.
“Not to my knowledge,” Bingham told New England Golf Monthly in a brief phone interview late last month. “I’d like to have members come and talk to us if that’s [coming up with $2,500 each to keep the club going] how they feel. Not to my knowledge.”
Profitable and historic. Sawyer Resort & Golf Advisors, which helps owners, developers, and lenders of resort and golf properties buy and sell their businesses, identified the private club as “profitable, very recognized and historic.” The listing, which put the club’s operating profit at $560,000, also noted that an additional 118 acres of residential and commercial property adjacent to the 35,000 square-foot building was available for sale as well.
Bill Sawyer, founder and manager of the golf advisors company, was also unavailable for comment.
An individual Pleasant Valley membership costs $7,000. Each member must pay an annual food assessment of $1,100, and the initiation fee is $8,500.
Serious economic challenges. The club is hardly alone in its struggles with financial woes that continue to affect the golf business, and private clubs in particular, across the country. As the number of golfers have dropped from 30 million in 2005 to 27.1 million, so have private club memberships, which plummeted to 2.1 million from 3 million in the early 1990s, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Indeed, some 15 percent of the country’s 4,400 or so private clubs face severe financial issues, says the NGF.
Bankrupt courses reopen. Boston golfers need look no farther than their own backyards to see the impact that the economy has had on courses in the Bay State. Sterling National Country Club and The Georgetown Club are just two of many golf course businesses struggling to deal with the realities of the economy.
Bankrupt Sterling National reopened last month as a public course under new ownership after the Jan Companies of Cranston, R.I., purchased the operation for $4.2 million at a foreclosure auction in May. Club managers expect the central Massachusetts course to be private again next year.
On the North Shore, the Georgetown (Mass.) Club closed suddenly last fall after the owner declared bankruptcy. New owners Black Swan Country Club LLC reopened the formerly private club to public play in June after buying it for $3.2 million at a foreclosure auction.
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out at the Boston Golf Examiner and National Golf Examiner websites. You may reach Kay at mlek@comcast.net)
Related posts:
- Georgetown Club back in business as Black Swan Country Club
- Massachusetts club offers free golf, discimination against gay and lesbian couples
- Segregansett Country Club A Players Club For over 100 years
- Mike Calef jumps on board at Brockton Country Club
- Foster Country Club/WEEI 103.7 Jimmy Fund Golf Classic
