This north Strand golf course is scheduled to reopen after being bought by a local group
Brick Landing Plantation is expected to reopen later this year as a true community golf course.
A group of local investors in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, have formed a company and signed a letter of intent to enter a lease-to-buy agreement with the intention of reopening the course, which has been closed since January.
The group is formed as Community Partners Golf LLC, and includes company president Ken McGill, Walt Maharay, Rick Coltharp, Gene Bonstein and Bill Fredericks.
“Several like minds and I kind of fell together over some conversations about, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be good if we could save this place?’ and that turned into, ‘You know we can probably figure this out and we can make plans for this,’ ” said McGill, a 12-year resident and past president of Brick Landing’s master property owners association. “Over time we figured out a deal.”
The initial lease period is allowing the prospective new owners to immediately prepare the course for reopening without having to wait for a closing of the sale later this year, and they hope to reopen by late September.
“It’s just a short-term lease to get us started so we can go through the steps we need to do to get everything up and running, and then a purchase,” McGill said.
The five residents are buying Brick Landing from three other residents who purchased it in January in the hopes of saving it from redevelopment.
Russ Baltzer, a master POA board member for about the past seven years and commercial architect based in North Myrtle Beach, and two partners formed Swan Partners LLC and purchased the 125-acre course for $1.2 million.
McGill would not disclose his group’s purchase price. Swan Partners will retain ownership of the clubhouse and The View restaurant within it, which is being run by owners of Purple Onion Café/Art Catering in Shallotte, N.C.
Former owner Larry Doyle, who purchased Brick Landing in 2011, closed it on Jan. 1 to avoid losing money on its operation this winter after previous attempts to sell it and was courting offers.
According to Brunswick County Planning and Zoning senior planner Marc Pages, Brick Landing — the golf course and surrounding property — is zoned R-7500 within a Planned Development, which would allow a medium density residential development with minimum lot sizes of 7,500 square feet.
Lead investors plan to sell shares to other residents
McGill and his partners are relying on support from fellow residents to make their purchase successful, and have sent a letter to the others in the master homeowners association.
They are selling shares in Community Partners Golf to other residents in increments of $5,000 to bolster the company and make operation of the golf course financially viable, and are pleading with residents to buy golf and social memberships and to support the course and restaurant.
“We expect and have already gotten quite a bit of interest from the community,” McGill said. “We expect to be able to open with the support of the community. We don’t expect to have to foot the whole bill. We have community support here and we just have to harness that and make it work.”
McGill said there are approximately 500 residences included in the master POA and there is additional property around the course that may be developed over time. There has been recent development and a new project with about 60 townhomes is slated, he said.
“We’ve had a building boom in here and that’s helped to bring in some new property owners and some new blood for the course, and we expect to take advantage of that in addition to marketing to other communities around here,” McGill said. “It has not been done as much as we think we can do.”
Prior to selling the course, Doyle said it struggled financially in part because it has lacked strong community support, with a high of about 18 percent of community residents owning memberships during his nearly nine-year ownership period, he said.
“We expect to do quite a bit better than that with the surveying of the community we’ve been doing,” McGill said. “Part of the community support is membership, but it’s really not just that. For a golf course like this to survive it needs both membership support as well as outside play, and we expect to do a good bit of marketing to improve that aspect too as we get the course back.”
McGill and his partners plan to market the course to others in surrounding communities and for inclusion in golf packages to supplement the resident support. “It’s really a two-part strategy for any kind of income stream for a golf course in this area,” he said.
The owners are beginning interviews for a superintendent and head professional and have had discussions with East Coast Golf Management about hiring the company to assist with operations, maintenance and marketing — from one aspect to all three.
East Coast, which manages a three Strand courses and has a marketing cooperative that includes more than 20 area courses, had marketing and maintenance agreements for Brick Landing at the time of its closing in January.
“We’re just figuring out exactly how we want to use them. We haven’t signed on for anything yet,” McGill said.
Brick Landing Plantation Golf Club is a scenic Mike Brazeal design along the Intracoastal Waterway that opened in 1987 and also includes a grand 11,000-square-foot clubhouse near the waterway’s banks.
The club and layout have had some renovations in recent years, including the installation of Sunday ultradwarf Bermudagrass greens in the summer of 2018 that will have to be brought back after six months of only minimal maintenance on the course overall.
“Most of the holes have been mowed to rough lengths, but there is quite a bit of weeds and the greens are going to need quite a bit of coming back, but we expect to be able to do that,” McGill said.
Prior to closing because of the coronavirus, The View restaurant remained open six days a week for lunch Monday through Friday, dinner Thursday and Friday, and brunch Sunday.
“We expect to partner with them to have the two operations mesh as good as they can because they’re complementary of each other,” McGill said. “The food service and the golf course need each other to prosper.
“. . . We’re going to stay optimistic with it. For us the plan is to rebuild this place.”
Barefoot hosts collegians
Barefoot Resort’s Dye Club hosted the Golfweek Myrtle Beach Collegiate from June 24-26, which attracted 119 college players including several with ties to the Grand Strand.
The 54-hole tournament featured 78 men from 51 colleges and 41 women from 32 schools. It was created after the coronavirus pandemic began through a collaboration between Golfweek magazine, the Golf Tourism Solutions technology and marketing agency that promotes the Myrtle Beach market, and Barefoot Resort to give college players an event to compete in.
Lansdon Robbins of Davidson, N.C. and UNC Wilmington won the men’s competition by a shot over Chase Korte of Metropolis, Illinois and Austin Peay State by closing with a 5-under 67 for a 10-under 206 on the challenging 7,152-yard Pete Dye design.
Robbins birdied four straight holes from 11-14 to take a three-shot lead and allow for a double bogey on the 18th.
Taylor Roberts of Parkland, Fla., a rising freshman at Florida State, led the women’s competition wire-to-wire and finished at 4 under to defeat runner-up Marissa Wenzler of Kentucky by two strokes. Wenzler’s final-round 68 matched the low women’s round of the week.
It was Roberts’ second victory on the Grand Strand in 2020 as she also won the Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship in March at TPC Myrtle Beach.
Among golfers with ties to the area, Smith Knaffle (Murrells Inlet/South Carolina) tied for ninth in the women’s tournament at 6 over following three consecutive rounds of 74.
On the men’s side, Coastal Carolina golfers Holden Grigg (Myrtle Beach), Connor Newton (Auburn, Ala.) and States Fort (Evans, Ga) competed, as did Patrick Golden (Murrells Inlet/College of Charleston) and Keegan Vaugh (Myrtle Beach/Charleston Southern).
Fort finished fourth at 4 under, Golden tied for eighth at even par, Newton was 41st, Grigg 59th, and Vaugh 61st.
This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 12:02 PM.
