Some golfers are wary of paying their 2017 membership fees up front at Blue Ocean Golf Club because they’re concerned the course could once again be taken over by the District of Sechelt.
“About four years ago, a whole bunch of us got beat up for paying advance fees for the coming years,” said golfer George Goudie at Sechelt’s Nov. 30 public works, parks and environment committee meeting.
He explained that when the golf course owed the district back lease fees in 2012, it was ultimately taken over by the district and membership fees paid to the previous owner weren’t reimbursed for the majority of golfers. Some who paid with credit cards were able to get the funds back through their credit card companies.
“Now we’ve got a new push going on for a membership drive for 2017,” Goudie said, noting he understood the golf course owed back lease fees once again to the district and several golfers had asked him to look into it.
“Do they owe money? And if they do, how long have they owed the money for, and how much do they owe?”
Director of finance Doug Stewart said the course does owe the district about $150,000 at the moment.
“It’s made up of a number of pieces: the loan for the equipment and the use of the greens equipment – there’s two years of payments for that, 2015 to 2016. Also the lease fees, which is about $10,000 a year, that’s for two years as well,” Stewart said.
He itemized the debt, saying about $80,000 is connected to the greens equipment, $20,000 is for the land lease and the other $50,000 is connected to legal fees related to renegotiating the golf course’s contract with the district.
“We actually have talked with them recently and we’re hopeful we’ll get the money before the end of the year,” Stewart said.
“I can’t explain why they haven’t paid, but we are following up on it.”
Bob Heaslip, planning advisor for Blue Ocean Golf Club, said his clients plan to pay the back fees within the next week and that things are going well at the golf course, so golfers don’t have to be concerned about it being taken over by the district.
He said there was a combination of issues that led to the fees not being paid sooner. “One was I was ill for about eight months, so I missed a lot of time and they expected me to review all of the invoices and stuff we were getting, so that’s one aspect of it,” Heaslip said. “The other is the turnover in both the district’s accounting department and the owner’s accounting department, there have been a number of changes there too. So it’s sort of dragged it out longer than it should have, but nothing should be read into it other than it’s just taken a long time.”
As for asking golfers to prepay their memberships for 2017, Heaslip said that’s standard practice.
“What it does is it guarantees a certain cash flow, which then allows them funds for maintenance and ongoing costs for the golf course,” he said.
Heaslip said owners of Blue Ocean Golf Club still plan to do improvements to the greens and clubhouse and build a hotel/spa on site, but it’s taking a while to get the final agreements in place for the hotel as the Sechelt Indian Band has to sign off on it.
“We’re pretty much done the agreements and everything we had to do with planning, so now it’s really down to the sensitive matters of dealing with the Sechelt Indian Band and that takes time,” Heaslip said.
He stressed that the owners are committed to seeing their vision through to fruition at Blue Ocean Golf Club.
“They’re here for the long term,” Heaslip said.
“They’re committed to producing a good golf course and hopefully a good hotel.”
