Pines Exploring All Options For Golf Course’s Future

Pines Exploring All Options For Golf Course’s Future
Worcester County is no longer pursuing an effluent irrigation project at the Ocean Pines Golf Course. File photo

BERLIN – The Ocean Pines Association (OPA) has started the search process for a company to lease or manage its golf course.

Although no decision has been made to end the contract with the current management company, Billy Casper Golf, Pines officials say they are exploring the possibilities.

“Right now all the options are open,” said Dave Stevens, president of the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors. “We could keep the same management. We could hire new management. We could lease the golf course. We could even go back to self- management. Nothing is off the table.”

Stevens said the request for proposals issued this week was the start of the information gathering process.

“We want a realistic look at what our options are,” he said.

Responses to the request for proposals are due Nov. 14. Stevens expects four or five companies to submit proposals. Once the responses are in, they’ll be scored by an evaluation team.

“It could be difficult because you’re not necessarily going to be comparing apples to apples,” Stevens said.

Ocean Pines officials plan to notify finalists in late November and to make a decision in December.

Stevens said the idea was to have the new company – if one was chosen — in place before next year’s golf season.

Billy Casper Golf was hired to manage Ocean Pines’ Robert Trent Jones course in the fall of 2010. It was hoped that the company, which owns or operates more than 100 courses in the United States, could improve the financial performance of the struggling course. Shortly after the company took over, however, it was determined that the course’s greens needed to be replaced — a nearly $1 million project that would take two years. The Board of Directors opted to fund part of the cost through a lifetime golf membership program.

Stevens said that while that did raise some money for the capital project, it also eliminated the roughly $50,000 in annual membership fees that would have been generated each year by the people that purchased the lifetime memberships.

“I thought it was a bad trade,” he said.

In September, the golf course ended the month with $8,675 more than it was budgeted to, according to OPA Comptroller Art Carmine, but overall figures are short of what was expected. Through Sept. 30, the course, which was budgeted to generate $138,319, had earned $86,621 after expenses.