Deal to sell Oakmont golf club hits headwinds

Several seniors posted up at the bar at Oakmont Golf Club’s Quail Inn early Thursday afternoon, taking their lunch and monitoring a golf tournament on television.

“Is that Hawaii?” asked a woman.

“Don’t see any palm trees,” replied an octogenarian fellow in strident red trousers. “Maybe it’s Australia.”

“Australia’s on fire,” she observed.

It was nice that they could at least watch some golf, because no one was playing the sport on either of the two golf courses in the heart of this adult community. Nor have they since Dec. 16, when management of the Oakmont Golf Club closed its two courses and laid off 45 people - most of the staff.

It was a surprising reversal of fortune in a saga that seemed to have been resolved last summer. On Aug. 8, members of the Oakmont Village Association voted overwhelmingly to raise their own dues up to $17 a month, with the express purpose of buying the money-losing Oakmont Golf Club.

While that was a critical step forward, the sale of club to the homeowners association soon encountered headwinds. As a result, the golf courses won’t be reopening until March, at the earliest.

To purchase the golf club, the Oakmont Village Association joined forces with an operating partner named Advance Golf Partners, which had promised to spend $1 million on the golf club in the first year, much of it on upgrades to the restaurants.

Advanced Golf had counted on its ability to secure a loan “that would be satisfactory to them,” said Oakmont Village Association president Steve Spanier. “And they didn’t get that loan. So Larry called me at one point and said, ‘I don’t think we can do this anymore.’?”

He was talking about Advance Golf Partner founder Larry Galloway, who had more second thoughts - after the Kincade fire torched 77,000 acres in the area - about his promise to cover the golf club’s liability premiums over $80,000.

In the end, the Oakmont Village Association had to go back to the drawing board, and reopen the bidding.

Advanced Golf bid again, and won again, with different terms. Foremost among them: the homeowners association, not Advanced Golf, will now pony up that $1 million in capital improvements.

Those delays, coupled with inclement weather and nine days of power outages at Oakmont, resulted in the golf club hemorrhaging even more money than usual throughout the fall.

“Expenses continue to accrue far in excess of revenue and our debt grows daily,” the club said in an email to members on Dec. 5.

That bad news communique further explained that even though a sale agreement was now in place, and even though Advance Golf had executed a long-term lease with the homeowners association, the deal was incomplete “until the transaction is funded and escrow is closed.”

The news on that front has been encouraging, of late. “We just heard from our original lender,” Spanier said Thursday. “We’ll probably sign the term sheet very soon.”

He expressed confidence that escrow will be closed and ownership transferred “definitely by the end of February, and hopefully before that.”

The golf courses are unlikely to be open until at least four weeks after that.

Golf addicts in the community have not had to go completely cold turkey: the driving range has remained open all this time.

“Do I want to be out on the course today?” said Oakmont resident Jack Cowden, on his way to the driving range. “Yes.” But the delay in opening, he went on, is “acceptable.”

“In the long term, this is a great move” for Oakmont, he said. Describing the club as “underutilized,” he is excited to see how Advance Golf will transform and update the facilities, the Quail Inn in particular.

“I wish they’d open tomorrow,” he said.

That, in fact, is happening. Looking at a favorable forecast, club management decided Thursday afternoon to open its west golf course through the weekend.

“This is the best stretch of weather we’ve had in weeks,” club president Gary Smith said.

“Maybe we can do it again in January. No guarantees.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Ausmurph88.