Lights Out: B.C.'s Struggling Golf Resorts
Oh sure, you’re on your game during this dream tour of B.C.’s new crop of high-end resort courses. Too bad the clubs are scrambling to stay in business, or even to open for it.
Your overwhelming thought while getting ready to swing for the pin at the 15th on Ucluelet’s Wyndansea Oceanfront Golf Resort: “I can’t wait to see what kind of shape John Daly’s in when he gets to this hole.”
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Yes, it’s a skins game1 kind of hole on a skins game kind of course – a Jack Nicklaus “Signature” design (the highest rung at Nicklaus Design, guaranteeing the Golden Bear was personally involved) with several spectacular oceanside holes, including this one, the most spectacular of all. On the entire planet there are only a handful of 190-yard par 3s where half the yardage involves a forced carry2 over jagged rocks with waves crashing among them.
Nevertheless, you resist the urge to replace Pro V3 with Prostaff4 (confidence is everything, right?), take a stance pointing out toward the ocean to counter that 50-km/h sea breeze (confidence, right?) and give the hybrid a smooth yet mighty swing (confidence!). Well, good thing you committed like that because the wind stacks up your ball, then smacks it down onto the respectably generous apron in front of the green. After a slick up and down, you walk a few steps off the putting surface to peer down and taunt a starfish, then march off toward the 16th. That’s what confidence can do for a person.
Then again, maybe it would be better to save the bravado for a course that actually exists – and be careful where you head because there are several other B.C. tracks that, like Wyndansea, sadly don’t. Two or three years ago, the province appeared to be headed toward the top of golf’s global leaderboard with an array of new courses from no-first-name-necessary figures such as Nicklaus, Faldo, Player, Norman, Couples, Sorenstam and Zokol, not to mention an equally impressive roster from golf architects such as Gil Hanse and David McLay Kidd, whose names, if not of the household variety, certainly quickened the pulse of aficionados.
Well, a credit crisis and property bust intervened, and while only some of those courses will challenge golfers with their design intricacies, all challenged developers with their economic and financial hazards. In this article you’ll follow both: the dream holes that barely are or might have been and the business plans and court orders that are only too real.
15th at Wyndansea
At Wyndansea, for example, it took confidence for Elke Loof-Koehler and her Marine Drive Properties to even think about building a championship-style golf course on this rocky property on the northern edge of Ucluelet, population 1,652.
But start construction the company did, even completing the 15th for demonstration purposes, in the spring of 2007, when sales of real estate were launched.
Interest in the million-dollar-plus lots was high, and the golf course had many people, including Nicklaus, making comparisons to seaside classics such as Cypress Point Club and Pebble Beach Golf Links5. Wyndansea seemed destined to set a new standard for golf in B.C., especially in the area of cost to play. Green fees were expected to approach or exceed $200, and the course was being marketed as stay-to-play, meaning that prospective golfers would have to purchase property or book lodgings at one of the hotels planned for the site.
But by fall, workers had disappeared from the estimated $650-million development, and in November 2007 a construction company filed a $1.9-million lien. In February of this year a court lifted Companies’ Creditor Arrangement Act (CCAA) protection, freeing lenders and creditors to sue for some $52 million.
Marine Drive has not responded to interview requests, but in recent news reports both Loof-Koehler and one of the development’s mortgage holders have expressed optimism that the project will obtain new financing, allowing work to resume. Jaded locals – hopeful if not necessarily confident – have renamed the development Waitansee.
1. A made-for-TV challenge event, typically featuring fan-favourite pro golfers on an ultra-scenic course
2. The portion of a shot that must be made through the air so as to avoid a hazard, such as water
3. An expensive brand of ball prized for its soft cover, which aids putting and chipping
4. An inexpensive brand of ball
5. Legendary seaside golf courses situated about two kilometres apart on California’s Monterey Peninsula
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