”The best way to sell land is to put in some general feature,”
explained Hugh D. Smeed, director of marketing for Aurora Venture, whose west suburban holdings include a 750-acre site at Eola and North Aurora Roads in Aurora. ”Give it a reason for being, not just carve it up into lots.”
For the Aurora Venture site and 20 other new housing developments in the Chicago area, that reason-for-being is a golf course. It does not come cheap. – For Stonebridge Golf Club, Aurora Venture invested $9.1 million in a new Tom Fazio-designed golf course and another $4.5 million in the new clubhouse, outdoor pool and tennis courts.
– The golf course land and construction at The Royal Fox Golf Club in west suburban St. Charles already has cost Robin Hill Development Co. $6 million, with another $7 million for the newly opened clubhouse, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, fitness center, tennis club and practice range.
– At Crystal Tree in southwest suburban Orland Park, developer Eugene R. Corley spent $200,000 per hole to build the 18-hole course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. The new clubhouse/swim and tennis club cost another $3.5 million.
The developers agree these ”extra” investments will help them sell a combined total of 1,661 homes priced from $179,900 (townhouse) to more than $1 million (custom single-family home).
”A golf course community is not only complicated land use, but it`s expensive,” Smeed said, quickly adding that the investment nonetheless makes good business sense.
”The developer makes more money in the long run because a good, professionally designed golf course enables premium home site prices and a faster sellout.”
If Aurora Venture`s 750-acre site had been subdivided traditionally, Smeed said, it would be 21 years before the total 2,100 lots were sold. By contrast, ”Stonebridge will be sold out in six years.”
The concept has been successful.
In less than a year, builders at Stonebridge have sold 62 custom homes
($300,000 to $800,000), 14 townhouses ($235,000 to $320,000) and 12 patio homes ($220,000 to $360,000).
Robin Hill Development has sold all but 45 of 291 homesites up to one acre priced from $90,000 to $195,000 at The Royal Fox Club since July, 1988.
When Crystal Tree opened sales in January, 1988, a total of 101 homes was sold in three weeks. The development of 100 single-family homes and 345 townhouses and patio homes is in its final phase.
The sales figures affirm that more people are golfing. The National Golf Foundation reports the number of amateur golfers rose 24 percent between 1985 and 1989 and the numbers ”are growing at a phenomenal rate.”
This accounts for much of the increased popularity of golf course housing, which commands special interest this week as the Chicago area celebrates two of its biggest professional golfing events, the Centel Western Open through Sunday at Butler National Golf Club and the U.S. Open, which begins Thursday at Medinah Country Club.
The foundation said the surge in golf`s popularity stems in large part from its growing appeal to women, children and Baby Boomers now in their 30s and 40s. The market for high-end housing clustered around golf courses draws from these families as well as empty-nesters.
Other golf course communities are being developed in North Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Lemont, Streamwood, Long Grove, Gurnee, Plainfield, Naperville, Sugar Grove, Geneva, Woodstock, Lake in the Hills and Lake Geneva, Wis.
Developers say the golf course itself is the ”heart” of such projects and commands the highest priority in planning, designing, plotting and engineering.
”We decided to build Stonebridge as a very upscale community,” Smeed said. ”In order to do this, we decided to get the very best golf course architect possible. We wanted this to be an exceptional course that would position the lots for upscale homes.
”We also wanted somebody actively involved in the process, not an athlete who just signs his name to the course,” he said.
Enter Tom Fazio, recently named Architect of the Year by Golf Course News.
”It was difficult to get Fazio,” Smeed said. ”He likes to work close to his home in North Carolina. Since he actually designs the course, he doesn`t have time to do many of them, maybe eight to 10 a year.”
Aurora Venture persisted.
”Fazio demanded wide latitude,” Smeed said. ”He said to us, `If all you want is run-of-the-mill to make money, I`ve got other things to do. If you give me carte blanche to do what I want, I`ll give you a helluva course.` ”
As a result, four of 18 fairways have homes on just one side, while two others, plus the driving range, have no homes at all. Less than 20 percent of the homes will abut the course.
Specifically, Smeed said, Fazio insisted that many of the wooded areas be used for tees and greens, not homesites.
”There are two basic ways to develop a golf course community,” Smeed explained. ”A `racetrack` site plan (that) puts homes on both sides of the fairway, and a `core` golf course that has parallel fairways and no lots fronting the course.
”The more lots that back up to the golf course, the better for maximizing the real estate values, at least for the short term,” Smeed said. ”We took a longer view. Fazio`s design is a compromise between racetrack and core extremes but has ensured a high-quality course that justifies upscale property values.”
When Eugene Corley acquired his 287-acre Orland Park site in 1986, he commissioned Tracy Cross & Associates for a market study that found a need in that area for a golf course community.
Corley, a golfer for 30 years, had pioneered the development concept 18 years ago with Mission Hills in north suburban Northbrook. He was eager to build another, and he wanted a ”premier” course.
The architect he chose was nationally known designer Robert Trent Jones Jr.
”We gave him a great deal of consideration,” Corley said. ”We let him use the amount of acres he wanted (168) to design the type golf course he wanted, and that established the number of houses.
”Actually, the process is a parallel, simultaneous collaboration of the land planner, the golf course architect and the engineers.”
It is not always a smooth collaboration.
”At times there were some very heated discussions,” Corley recalled.
”At one point he asked us to take out four homes to the left of the first tee. He said, `If you don`t eliminate those houses, I`m going to walk.`
”I looked at his feet and saw he was wearing walking shoes, so I said,
`Okay, Bobby, we`ll take them out.”`
He said Jones is a ”hands-on” architect who during construction walked the course with a sketchbook, making changes where necessary, and moving 300,000 yards of dirt for shaping fairways, elevating tees and creating bunkers while retaining natural hills in the overall design.
With golf course locations for 85 percent of its homes, Crystal Tree has a more conventional racetrack site plan.
The development process can be complicated, costly and controversial. It often entails financial risk.
Vince Salano Jr., developer of Eagle Creek Country Club in Naples, Fla., and Glendale Lakes Golf Club in west suburban Glendale Heights, experienced it all in creating the $240 million Royal Fox golf course community.
In late 1986 he retained The Balsamo/Olson Group, architects, land planners and engineers, to examine the feasibility of developing a 300-acre farm outside St. Charles.
Robert Olson, president and principal of the firm, said the site was suited for a golf course with townhouses and two price levels of single-family homes. With economic calculations based on these recommendations, Salano moved to acquire the land early in 1987.
”Even before the purchase agreement we had invested nearly $200,000,”
he said. ”But it was worth the risk to make the project work.”
To prepare for annexation to St. Charles and rezoning, Salano gathered his development ”team”-Bob Olson, Terence Mach, director of planning, and Jim Fey, civil engineer from The Balsamo/Olson Group, and nationally recognized golf course architect Dick Nugent, of Long Grove.
The approval process took more than a year, a period in which Salano said he ”sweat it out” because his cash outlay of $500,000 and commitments of $1 million would be lost without annexation and rezoning.
The final plan provided for a 150-acre golf course and 291 custom single- family homesites ”more in keeping with the upscale character of St. Charles.”
City approval proved difficult and time-consuming.
”There was a lot of resistance to residential development from `horse country` residents in Wayne and St. Charles who wanted to retain natural open space,” Salano said.
”Other citizens fought to save a large stand of trees on the property. Without the golf course as manicured and recreational open space, this project never would have been approved.”
Land planner Mach provided an initial alignment of the golf course area, subject to refinement and change by Nugent, that created ”envelopes” within the project for both the course and housing as well as road alignments, grades, engineering and plotting.
Nugent had major impact on the overall plan and responsibility for the actual course design.
”I worked for revisions in the clubhouse siting, practice range and entrance to improve the course,” he said. ”I got changes in the drainage patterns because they affected some golf holes.”
He then developed a schematic layout of tee to green, determining widths and corridors for safety and best play.
”This modified the preliminary plan and in some cases impacted the land plan,” he said. ”Then the engineering-roads, storm drainage, utilities, grading-had to be integrated with the course and subdivision. Water retention is crucial, and much of it was to be absorbed by the course.”
At this point in the planning process, Nugent said he knew where the holes were to be, where the perimeter and water holes were and the lengths, greens, fairways and major drainage patterns.
”Now comes the fun part-`imagineering,”` Nugent recalled. ”Now I produce the holes.”
He said design of the course had to be compatible with the concept of the total development, and this style or philosophy always is provided by the developer, ”similar to determining whether housing is to be traditional or modern.”
It was not a typical developer/designer relationship, however, and Nugent said it made his assignment more challenging.
”Vince is an avid golfer with an 11 handicap who`s played more than 100 courses throughout the country,” Nugent said. ”His interest in golf gave him insight that most developers don`t have. If the developer is not golf-oriented, it`s much more difficult to educate them and to get housing concessions for a better course.”
As a result, Nugent`s design work required ”many discussions” with the developer, almost all of them over the course itself.
”For example, a big challenge was the 18th hole, the longest hole with a par 5 at 560 yards and an island green,” he said. ”The course was under construction before the 18th design was resolved up to the last minute.
I did eight revisions, each one a fight with Vince, but each purely a golf debate.”He`s one of the most emotionally involved golf developers I`ve ever worked with. But that intensity and commitment have had a lot to do with the success of his communities.”
This summer Salano will break ground for the new Broken Arrow Golf Club in Lockport, planned for 1,300 housing units and what he said would be an
”innovative, trend-setting” 27-hole course.
Nugent said that when it matures, Royal Fox will rank among the best courses in the Chicago area.
Other Nugent-designed courses include Forest Preserve National in Oak Forest, Kemper Lakes in Long Grove; Golf Club of Illinois in Algonquin, Arboretum and Buffalo Grove in Buffalo Grove, Glendale Lakes in Glendale Heights, Oakbrook Hills in Oak Brook and Bull Valley Golf Club in Woodstock.
Bull Valley represented yet another approach to golf course communities.
”We did the golf course community backwards, the opposite of what most land planners would recommend,” said Harry Vignocchi, club president.
”First, because the golf course was paramount, we designed it to fit the land, and then we laid out the home sites.”
The golf course, designed by Nugent in 1987, covers 200 acres; 150 acres were set aside for 177 single-family home sites, of which 147 have been sold for prices ranging from $80,000 to $150,000.
The remaining 150 acres will be developed with townhouses sometime in the future, Vignocchi said.
A 37,000-square-foot clubhouse for the private golf club will open Sunday.
”This is a beautiful piece of property with both woods and hills,”
Vignocchi said. ”The 18-hole course is in two valleys, while the homes are situated on high ground.”
Nugent said he was given a ”free hand” at Bull Valley, providing him with a lot more flexibility in developing the course, a situation which can be harder for the designer.
”Even though there was no housing plan, I had to use common sense in creating a course that nonetheless could be adapted for residential development,” he said.
Vignocchi acknowledged that the emphasis on the golf course resulted in fewer home sites.
”But maybe we`ll profit more in the long run because this design has resulted in a greater value for the golf course and for the homes,” he said.
