Tucked away just off Buellton’s Avenue of the Flags, the Zaca Creek Golf Course doesn’t look like much these days. Overgrown with weeds, overrun by gophers, and sporting greens more accurately described as browns, it’s certainly seen better days.
But the city of Buellton is banking on bringing the modest nine-hole executive course back from the dead, investing $500,000 to buy the property and pledging tens of thousands more to get it back into playing shape.
That move has drawn criticism from residents. The price, though by all accounts a good buy for 24 acres, constitutes nearly a quarter of the city’s $2.4 million in general fund reserves and comes at a time when Buellton is making tough budget decisions for the upcoming fiscal year.
Buellton Mayor Ed Andrisek, instrumental in securing the deal, defended the purchase as a valuable acquisition for the city.
“It took 25 years to get to the state it’s in now, and I would hope that we can revitalize it to the point that people are proud of it,” he said. “There are people who want it to succeed, and I guess the question is: Are you going to support it?”
Andrisek contends the city never intended to get into the golf business, only jumping in after a flood of public sentiment against the course’s closure came from retirees and participants in “The First Tee,” a program that annually introduced about 125 Central Coast children to the sport.
“They packed the house, saying, ‘Please, help us save the golf course, it’s a treasure for us,’” he said. “That’s what’s motivated us.”
From green to red
Zaca Creek has a long history of financial losses. Built as an amenity for the nearby Rancho de Maria housing development in 1986, it experienced early success; but times changed, revenues dropped, and in 2006, course owner Four Oaks Partners put it in escrow. It was appraised at $1.5 million and fell out without a buyer.
The course’s last operator, Pete Concepcion, began leasing the property from Four Oaks in 2004. Despite concessions from the city on water costs and not being charged a rental fee by the owners, it failed to turn a profit for years.
In 2010, the Buellton City Council agreed to charge a flat rate for Zaca Creek to use the city-owned well on the property. With hopes of saving the course, they waived water fees for six months. But the costs still proved unaffordable, and the course deteriorated.
In August, Andrisek directed city staff to find a business plan to remedy the situation. The mayor and city Parks and Recreation Vice Chair Tom Armor formed an ad hoc committee to study purchasing the property.
Unable to make ends meet, Concepcion officially shuttered Zaca Creek on Dec. 27, 2010. At the time, he reported an average of 14 golfers using the facility on a daily basis. With green fees running less than $20, revenue simply wasn’t enough to cover expenses.
The city asked the Rancho de Maria’s Homeowner’s Association if they would consider taking it over; they wanted nothing to do with it. Rather than see it decay further, the Buellton City Council voted unanimously to buy the property on May 26, touching off a debate over what to do with the open space.
According to Armor, a golfer himself, Zaca Creek deserves saving, and satisfies an important need in Buellton because it’s short and inexpensive to play.
“Really the ultimate goal, just to start, is to try to get this thing to pay for itself,” Armor said. “We’re all looking at this realistically. We’re not going to turn this into a country club; we just want to make it playable and show the community that this can be the gem that it used to be.”
With the addition of a driving range, Armor said, Zaca Creek would provide a practice spot for local golfers unwilling to play at larger, more expensive courses in Solvang and Lompoc.
“I don’t think the course has ever been used to its potential,” Armor said. “It just hasn’t been managed well. There’s no personal statement about the people who’ve run it before, but it is what it is.”
Teeing off
Buellton City Manager John Kunkel helped negotiate the Zaca Creek deal. As open space, the land proved difficult to appraise, but based on a formula, it ranged from $300,000 to $1 million. At $20,833 per acre, Kunkel said, the sticker price landed on the low end for agricultural land.
“If you look at it one-dimensionally, from a golf course perspective only, it probably doesn’t make too much sense, because two or three different people have been in there and couldn’t make it,” Kunkel said. “My experience has been that if the private sector can’t make it go, rarely can the public sector make it work. But if you look at what it could be—sports fields or a companion to River View Park—if that’s of value to you, then that’s how you need to look at that.”
Though Buellton resident Peggy Brierton agrees the city got a deal on the land, the local artist and member of Buellton Is Our Town (BIOT) has become one of the acquisition’s most vocal critics.
“I felt it was rushed,” Brierton said of the decision. “To be comfortable with [spending] taxpayer money, I needed more information. All the community has to be part of these decisions, and none
of these talks have taken place.
“If we can’t afford it later, maybe it isn’t such a good deal,” she added. “Taxpayer money purchased this, and the taxpayers will have to absorb the future costs, no doubt about it.”
A grassroots organization opposed to city expansion, BIOT originated the city’s Urban Growth Boundary Initiative in 2007, which voters approved by a comfortable margin. Out of the initiative came the Buellton Community Visioning Process, which included plans to renovate the Avenue of the Flags. Brierton is concerned what impact the course’s future costs, yet to be determined, might have on redevelopment.
“I’m not knocking the city for thinking this is something they can add to their [recreation] department, but was it a wise choice at this time without all the information? And what is the city willing to forgo or put off or not have because of this acquisition?” Brierton asked. “They’re simple questions, but there was no discussion.”
According to Kunkel, the city had to pull the trigger before the course deteriorated further. The decision won’t have an effect on prior visioning plans, he said, as the general fund money used for the purchase isn’t tied to redevelopment.
Mayor Andrisek confirmed the financial situation, and said revamping the Avenue of Flags remains Buellton’s top priority.
“This golf course is not a redevelopment issue, it’s a revitalization of an asset that we believe has been adequately supported by the locals,” Andrisek said. “Whether that will continue, you can always be fooled, but we’ve got a pretty enthusiastic group of people that have voiced their opinion to at least go forward and give it a try.”
Can it survive?
According to a survey conducted for the city of Buellton by the National Golf Foundation, similar nine-hole municipal courses have foundered in recent years. Livermore’s city-owned course, Las Positas, has continually lost money, despite being leased out to a private party for $1 per year. Cash-strapped Burbank recently lent $1 million and deferred $2 million more in debt repayments to DeBell, that city’s municipal course, to keep it alive.
And Laguna Lake Golf Course, a similar executive-length course owned and run wholly by the city of San Luis Obispo, reported a loss of $110,000 in the 2009-2010 fiscal year and continues to struggle.
The city’s ability to do what previous course operators haven’t been able to do—turn a profit—depends on the approach, supporters say.
At a packed and contentious City Council meeting on June 9, council members agreed Buellton shouldn’t run the enterprise themselves, voting unanimously to send out a Request for Proposal to lease the course out to professional managers.
According to Kunkel, two people have already approached the city to run Zaca Creek privately, though council members remain divided on whether to maintain it as a golf course.
The city hopes installing a more efficient $8,600 water pump will solve a major problem—the cost of watering the course—and anticipates annual revenues of $168,000, based on 40 rounds played
per day.
Despite the city’s optimism, Buellton resident Harris Sherline, who owned a similar nine-hole golf course in Goleta for 15 years, doesn’t think the projections are realistic.
“You just can’t operate a nine-hole golf course and make any kind of money,” Sherline said. “The idea that the city is going to take that over and operate it, knowing that they’re going to lose money on it, is an inappropriate use of public funds.”
Sherline said he doesn’t believe Buellton should be involved in doing business with taxpayer money and doubted any management team would be able to step in and succeed where others have failed.
“For any government to get involved in what amounts to a private enterprise is a guaranteed loser,” Sherline said. “If they think they’re going to hire somebody that’ll run it and make money for them, it’s just not in the cards.”
Furthermore, Sherline said, until outside management can be brought in, the city will incur the ongoing costs of maintaining greens and keeping the course in shape. At a time of significant economic insecurity, he said, a municipal golf course represents too much of a financial risk.
“There’s a lot of problems out there, and cities and counties all over the country are retrenching, and they decide all of a sudden they’re going to undertake this thing because it’s a cheap acquisition,” Sherline said. “There’s a price to everything, and even if you buy something you think is a bargain, it can turn out to be an albatross.”
Since the course’s closure, a crew of volunteers—many of them former Zaca Creek employees—has kept the grass mowed and the trash collected. The city currently has no equipment to maintain the greens and fairways, but council members have approved an additional $10,000 to buy used mowers from a wholesaler.
Mayor Andrisek has also asked for a budget of $100,000 to fully refurbish the course. He’s set a target date of September to get Zaca Creek open for play, else risk losing out on tourism dollars.
Fees collected from the course’s current patronage won’t be enough to keep it going, concedes Parks and Recreation’s Armor. The city will have to market it well, he said, connecting it to tourism, hotels, and wineries and opening it up for fundraisers and other community functions.
“As visible progress happens, people are going to start warming up to it a little bit,” Armor said. “I think people are just a little afraid, thinking, ‘What is Buellton doing running a golf course?’ I can certainly understand that, but I think we just have to look at it as an asset to the community. It’s not the end of the world if it closes, but let’s give it a good try, put the right people in place and be smart about it.”
Plotting a different course?
By law, the Zaca Creek land must remain open space, free from urban
development. With its limited access and lack of parking, Brierton believes the city’s hands are tied on potential uses.
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“Whether more acreage is purchased to accommodate more parking, you still have the issue of that’s in people’s backyards, literally,” she said. “If it remains just a park, that’s going to cost the city more money.”
Now that the land is city owned, Brierton said she’d like to see it turned into a public park, complete with a trail system. However, when compared with other recreational possibilities, a golf course has a higher probability of financial success, according to Andrisek.
The mayor pointed out that SLO’s Laguna Lake course, while struggling, still recovers 77 percent of costs; Buellton currently recovers just 29 percent from its recreation sector, he said.
Andrisek drew comparisons to Buellton’s Paws dog park, which cost the city $100,000 and sees no return on the investment, though it’s thoroughly supported by the community. The city has also put more than $4 million into River Park, which doesn’t receive even a five percent recovery.
“There was discussion of, ‘Well I don’t want us to be in the golf course business, we can just own the land,’ he said. “Well, I think it’s silly to not at least give it a try, because owning a park is not even going to bring us 10 percent of the recovery.”
Between tourists and golf enthusiasts, Andrisek believes there’s enough support to make Zaca Creek profitable again. And if the course isn’t paying its own way after five years, he said he has no problem absorbing it into the city’s Parks and Recreation division.
“I felt compelled to at least pursue this, and in five years, I guess the question is, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Andrisek said. “The worst thing is that it would be a public open space and we wouldn’t even have to mow it. We could make it a natural habitat and have a field-type grass there.
“There are some businesses that are shuttered here in town already that have tremendously more financial ruin than we would have, than we would experience with the loss of the course,” he said. “But we would always have the land, and from every indication it’s a good thing for us to have. And if we have open space that generates revenue, then I think that’s a win-win for us.”
Contact Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2011.