The central focus of the golf course and resort community at Keswick near Charlottesville, VA, is the imposing, 100-year-old mansion.

    Money magazine features its new list of "Best Places to Live" in the current (August) issue.  This year's best place is Middleton, WI, not exactly a hotbed of golf course communities but it seems like an ideal community in which to live in summer after wintering in southern Florida, for example.  A sidebar article caught my attention; in it, the editors recall some of their former selections as "best places," and a couple of them I know fairly well.
    Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C., for example, earned the best distinction in 1994.  The area is a hotbed for engineers and other techies because of Research Triangle Park and ideal for those who want to be near a cluster of great universities, including Duke and North Carolina.  The area also offers a wide variety of golf course communities.  At the top of the list is Governor's Club, with 27 holes of Jack Nicklaus Signature golf, an involved membership, and beautifully manicured properties.  Homes start in the mid six figures and rise to the millions, with many nice views of the golf course.
    Less expensive but still close enough to Chapel Hill to take advantage of all the cultural and sports activities at the major universities are Chapel Ridge and The Preserve at Jordan Lake.  Chapel Ridge includes a very playable Fred Couples designed course, featuring a number of challenging doglegs and large, undulating greens.  The Preserve, like Chapel Ridge, features a nice balance of families with young children, empty nesters and retirees.  House prices in both communities run from the mid- to upper-six figures.
    For those interested in a new but classically appointed private club outside a community, Old Chatham Golf Club, which is focused entirely on golf, has received rave reviews.  And there is always the sleek Robert Trent Jones course at Duke University, which is open to the public but is always in private-club condition.
    Charlottesville, VA, was Money's best community in 1998, and its character also relies very much on a local university, in this case the University of Virginia, the invention of Thomas Jefferson.   The town has become immensely popular largely because of a low tax rate and its setting at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains; traffic and housing prices have increased signfiicantly in recent years, but that is pretty much the story in many hot towns in the south. 

    For those willing to play sweater weather golf two or three months a year, a nice array of communities are available.  We liked Keswick for its opulent feel and imposing mansion/clubhouse on the hill overlooking an Arnold Palmer golf course; Glenmore for its Scottish-links-like course and well manicured community; Old Trail, where the recent film Evan Almighty was shot, for its fair pricing and small-town ethos; and Wintergreen, the mountain resort just 40 minutes out of town where, on a few days in January, you just might be able to ski in the morning and play golf in the afternoon.      

    And for a classic and historic golf club, get to know some local members who can vouch for you at the historic Farmington Golf Club.  The course is a charmer and part of the clubhouse an original plantation home designed and built by Thomas Jefferson himself.

    With a nod to Yogi Berra, yesterday I had one of those moments of déjà vu all over again (Yogi Berra, for our European readers, is a former baseball player known for such malaprops as, "No one goes to that restaurant anymore; it's too crowded.")  On Sunday, I wrote about how some golf course operators are working with builders and developers to increase revenue for their golf operations.  Afterwards, I met a 70-year old couple who are living a nightmare in a golf course community where the golf course owner and residents could not be farther apart.
    Pat and Fred live in a condominium in Connecticut during the summer months but, like many retired couples in the northeast, spend the winter months in Florida, at a condo they own in Vero Beach.  The condo has a nice view of the eighth green of the Vista Meadows Golf Club and is within five minutes of the ocean.  Their community, which is called Vista Royale, is restricted to people 55 and older and offers a full range of activities on site. The couple love their neighborhood and neighbors, think Vero Beach is a great place to live and have been enthusiastic members of the Vista Meadows Golf Club.
    Things changed three years ago after two hussies named Frances and Jeanne came to town.  The hurricanes wreaked havoc in Vero Beach, the torrential rains they brought combining with extremely high temperatures to create black mold on the insides of many units.  According to Pat and Fred, the interiors of some condos were so black that they appeared to have suffered fire damage.  As if that wasn't bad enough, the insurance company that covered the community went belly up.  Of necessity, the state of Florida had to step in but is still trying to figure out how to deal with insurance coverage for Vero Beach and other places affected by the hurricanes.  The insurance checks have not come close to meeting the reconstruction costs. 

    In the last three years, some of Vista Royale's residents have passed away or moved to nursing facilities.  Many of their units have been on the market for well over a year.  Currently, more than 300 of the community's 1,200 units are listed, a quantity that is depressing the values of all the units in the community.  The company doing the mold removal work and other repairs has been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work and has been fending off accusations of overcharging.  Pat and Fred say they have paid $10,000 to have a wall of sheet rock torn down, mold removed, and the sheetrock replaced. To complicate matters, asbestos was found in the walls of some of the older units, requiring special, and of course more expensive, handling.
    But the thing that seems to gall Pat and Fred and their fellow residents the most is the state of the golf course whose current owner, the residents accuse, is trying to force them into a rewrite of covenant restrictions to permit development of land adjacent to the course.  The residents are resisting any change to the original covenant, even though Vero Beach has a height restriction on construction (just two stories) and, Fred and Pat acknowledge, any new units would not affect the views from existing condos.  
    Last year, according to the couple, the course was in exquisite shape, attracted lots of outside play, as well as member play, and everyone was happy.  But for reasons unexplained to the residents, the owners of the course ran out of money and the mortgage holder foreclosed on the course, which was auctioned off last December for $2.8 million.  
    This year, the new owner has decided to test the resolve of the residents; he is keeping the lawn mowers in the tool shed, and the course has become overgrown and unsightly, according to letters written to local papers ("a cow pasture," one writer described it).  The owner, a local lawyer, is also threatening to turn part of the clubhouse into an "arcade" for people from outside the community to play games of chance and win gift certificates offered by local retailers (casino gambling is not legal in Florida except on offshore boats).  These arcades are popular throughout Florida, and Pat and Fred worry that their community will become host to a steady flood of "gamblers."  
    Vista Royale's owners had the opportunity to purchase the course two decades ago, but the golfers could not convince the non-golfers in their midst to ante up.  Now, of course, the price will be a lot steeper, but the cost of doing nothing might be even higher as the values of Vista Royale's condos spiral downward in a glutted market.  And with all the golf courses and condos in Florida to choose from, why would someone look at a unit next to a ratty looking golf course?
    Our bet is that there will eventually be some accommodation that both sides of this ugly argument can agree to.  One solution could be that the residents will make a generous offer to purchase the course and hire a management company to run it.  That offer would have to be well north of the $3 million the owner has invested in the course already.  The other, more reasonable alternative is for the residents to let the owner build homes along parts of the golf course as long as they meet certain architectural standards consistent with the rest of the community.  Vista Royale's residents, many of them well past 60 years old, should not want to go into the tough business of supervising the running a golf course.
    In the end, money will force a solution, as it almost always does.  The course owner will get some return on his investment, and the residents' will be comforted that the values of their condos will be restored, and that they can once again play golf on their own course.  We plan to follow this story to what we hope is a happy conclusion.

Mandatory memberships help courses survive