At last Monday night’s Beach & Parks District meeting the executive director presented his analysis on the possible acquisition & rehabilitation of the Boca Teeca golf course. The bottom line is that the District commissioners and the executive director agreed that the District has the financial resources and capability to acquire and rehabilitate the property for a 27 hole championship level golf course. There were several comparisons made to other acquisitions made by the District, including Ocean Strand and Sugar Sand Park with this potential acquisition and improvement being a similar project that is consistent with the District’s mandate to acquire and improve recreational property within the District.
Friday October 21 at 5pm was the deadline for the “best & final offers” to be made to the City for the City’s west Glades Road golf course. Since these offers are public information it is expected that these offers will be made public at the workshop meeting on Monday afternoon and published on the city web site accordingly. Residents in Boca Teeca have encouraged the Lennar Corp to make their highest offer in order to cooperate with residents on this issue, but there can be no assurances that Lennar will be the highest offer, nor that the City will accept the Lennar offer which is expected to include the Boca Teeca golf course property in its terms. Note, all past offers are essentially off-the-table as the rules put into place by the recent City Council meeting established specific guidelines and this deadline for making offers for their west Glades Road course.
The guidelines approved by the City Council on the sale of the Glades Road golf course indicates that the City Council will select a winning bidder on Nov. 22nd and further negotiations of a contract will occur subsequently. City staff expects the timeline for signing a definitive contract with the buyer to occur in January 2017. Residents should encourage the city to not sell the current municipal golf course without having a plan to provide a championship level public golf course within the city. Selling the current golf course for over $40 million in cash AND receiving the ownership of the Boca Teeca golf course is a win-win scenario for all, as the Beach & Park District could rehabilitate the course and operate the property in a manner similar to most other parks in the city.
Keep Golf in Boca will have a meeting of all supporters who have signed the petitions (or wish to sign the petition) on Nov. 3rd at 7pm at the Boca Raton Community Center/next to city hall. Please invite your neighbors as this meeting will also include guests from the Beach & Parks District who will be available to answer questions about the District’s support of acquiring and improving the Boca Teeca golf course. Keep Golf in Boca is the non-profit organization that has been opposing any development on the Boca Teeca golf course and has obtained over 1,000 petition signatures from residents for supporting their position to save to golf course.
Accordingly, patience is needed as this process continues to evolve. Rumors about the expiration of the Lennar contract are exactly that-Rumors and should be ignored. As illustrated by the terms and details in the contract for the city’s golf course, these contracts are often for a period of years, pending several contingent conditions which we also expect to be the circumstances with the Wells Fargo-Lennar contract. While this is a confidential contract it would be expected that the contract would have a minimum of 2-3 years since there are similar timelines for the current city golf course contract and they do not have to work on getting a deed restriction removed which would be the case for the Boca Teeca property if Lennar were to attempt to build on this property. Again, this is a confidential contract which the bank nor Lennar have been willing to disclose the terms, but based upon similar properties and the deed restriction it is not expected that the Lennar contract has expired.
Thank you to all Boca Raton residents supporting bringing public championship level golf back to the residents and visitors of our city.
What a gift we are handing the residents of Boca Teeca. They get to keep a dog of a golf course which probably will never be self supporting and we will have to help maintain it even though we will not play on it and the developers will get a larger piece of land to build on….just what we need….more building, no? I still say, what is wrong with Boca Municipal? Is the City of Boca Raton in need of funds, or what? Dorothy M. Conde
Boca Teeca was not profitable before and was much cheaper and with more gimmicks and could not attract regular cadre of players. It is a dog of a golf course and the layout was not great. Boca Municipal is a profitable course and well run. If professional managers could not make it work why take on this project. The IBM property would have been better but turned into a park instead. Don’t take a loser and try to make it work.
Boca municipal golf course should remain as it is
A public golf course for the public is important
Linda Greenberg
Why does the city government need to tamper with things that do not need tampering. The Boca municipal course is a wonderful golf course and should be kept as it is. If the city wants to get involved with the Boca Teeca course why not treat it separately. Why sell the municipal course? The last thing that Glades Road needs is more traffic from yet another development.As my mother used to say “Leave well enough alone”.
Walter Engdahl
Has anyone done a study to see how all this proposed housing will be occupied?
The last thing we need is for beautiful green areas to give way for housing that might not be fully occupied
I understand the golf course at Boca Teeca needs help, but the municipal golf course should remain as such
Where would non country club members enjoy golf in Boca Raton?