It’s spring, and at the Lakewood Golf Club, the season brings the hope of a new beginning-not only for golfers working out their kinks on the links, but also for course operators trying to get out of a financial sand trap.
The 18-hole golf course was a privately developed club purchased in late 1991 by Lakewood, a community of 1,700 tucked between Crystal Lake and Huntley.
The village, with an annual budget of $745,000, went into debt and spent $4.3 million to buy the course from a financially troubled developer.
“The developer was going bankrupt,” said former Village President Scott Breeden. “The village had to get involved, because there wasn’t a developer that would walk in.”
The village thought it could make money from the club. It had been laid out by Roger Packard, who, among other courses, designed the Kemper Lakes course in Long Grove.
The Lakewood course features two island greens and one island tee, trademarks of a Packard course. It also has 60 acres of natural wetlands and 80 sand traps. Golf Digest named it one of the Chicago area’s top courses.
But it didn’t take long for the village to realize that while it was collecting greens fees, it was swimming in the red.
Revenues for the first year under village ownership were less than expected. After paying operating expenses, Lakewood had no money left to cover the $300,000 annual debt service on the general obligation bonds that had been issued to finance the purchase of the course.
So taxpayers had to pick up the slack. Residents were hit with an average property tax increase of $500 a year, a levy they’re still paying.
But the trap wasn’t as deep as it may have first appeared.
The golf course is now making money for the village, turning a $250,000 operating profit last year. Village officials hope the course will be supporting itself by the end of the decade, taking the burden off taxpayers.
Lakewood Trustee Bill Montgomery, chairman of the village golf committee, credited the turnaround in part to a 1993 decision by the Village Board to hire an outside company to manage the course.
“We asked ourselves, should we oversee the people running it? Or should we examine management companies?” Montgomery said.
“We quickly saw that we didn’t have the time or the expertise” to run a golf course, he said.
Since taking over, GreenVision Management, now a part of Crown Golf Properties, has repaired the greens and paved the parking lot.
The temporary clubhouse has been tripled in size, and by Memorial Day, the golf cart paths will be paved as well.
GreenVision also added a “Network 8,000” computerized irrigation system.
The system has 4,000 sprinkler heads and 3 to 4 miles of buried pipe.
With the system, sprinklers can be adjusted at a computer control panel, instead of having to adjust each head individually.
Since private management took over, play has increased from 18,000 rounds to 30,000 rounds a year. Today, the club’s operators are trying to sock away more money for improvements.
“Our goal is to put $50,000 aside each year for capital improvements,” said Bill Krueger, course operations manager and head golf professional.
Breeden blames early difficulties with the course on the Village Board’s decision to reject a developer who had planned to build homes priced from $250,000 to $350,000 around the course.
Some residents believed the development, with houses on 3/4-acre lots, would be too dense.
“We were in a position where we had a developer who was going to build a clubhouse and put the golf course in real good shape financially,” Breeden said.
“Because of some pressure from people . . . they voted that down. I’ll never understand.”
Breeden expressed hope that the course would continue to grow in profitability, and that early problems would be forgotten once the course starts making enough money to cover its debt service.
“In another 5 or 10 years, when everything is running smoothly, those people who are involved now will look like heroes.”
