€20M PLAN GIVES EAST CLARE NEW HOPE
Joint venture offers a huge boost after long struggle. By Brian Keogh
LAST year marked the 25th anniversary of East Clare Golf Club’s affiliation to the GUI and so it seems appropriate that the club’s “silver wedding” year should mark the start of a new marriage it hopes will bring much gold.
Like many Irish clubs, the Dr Arthur Spring designed parkland course situated just a 10-minute drive from the shores of beautiful Lough Derg and within a half hour of Limerick, Shannon and Ennis, has struggled to keep its head above water.
At the height of the most recent golfing boom, the club had more than 700 members but numbers slowly dwindled to just over 350 in recent times.
Before they knew it, bank debt spiralled to more than €1.1m but it now appears that a gathering gloom has been replaced by a chink of light at the end of what once looked like a very long and dark tunnel.
The member-owned course sits next door to East Clare Holiday Village, and after “eyeing each other over the fence” for years, as the chairman of East Clare Holiday Village Ltd, Emelyn Heaps put it recently, they have decided to enter a new joint venture that should ensure that the club survives and f lourishes.
East Clare Development Village has taken over the management of both the holiday village and the club and plans to invest as much as €20 million in redeveloping the resort and the golf course over the next five years.
It’s an ambitious but imaginative plan and the membership of the club can only be delighted that golf will continue to be played at a resort that attracts up to 15,000 visitors a year, many of them from the US.
They don’t come to play golf but to stay at the holiday village, which opened in 2006, and explore the joys of Co Clare and beyond with Galway, the Aran Islands, Limerick and the Burren all within easy reach.
“Up until now you had two independent business – one of them 51 holiday homes, the other one the golf course,” explained Scottish native Brian Martin, CEO of East Clare Development Village Ltd.
“Like many other courses, the membership had been dropping year on year and the immediate reaction to that is to put prices up, which is a vicious circle.
“So after talking to the golf course for the past year about bringing the two business together, that’s what we’ve done.
“We’ve come along and taken responsibility for the loans outstanding to the bank, basically buying the course and assets and taking over the loans.
The five-year plan is to remove the indebtedness of the golf course and give it a long-term prospect of success.”
“With 10,000 holiday visitors coming to the village each year, getting some of them to come over and buy a golf ball or have a coffee or a meal, will make a difference. So it is about cross-pollinating that business and getting the golf club an income source that could be easy to sustain.”
Making East Clare Village a more attractive place for visitors means improving the facilities and the banks have accepted plans to invest more than €20m in phases over a three to five-year period.
As many as eight sites for luxury housing have been identified on the golf course and once that project is up and running, a leisure club and gymnasium will be added before the final piece of the jigsaw is put in place – as many as 60 apartments for over 55s in the woodland in the centre of the course.
“The members also have plans to improve the golf course and formed a course development committee that will make proposals to us,” Martin added.
As part of the new deal, membership fees have been cut by €100 to €650 for 2018, with a pledge to reduce them to €500 over the next three years.
“The course is owned by the members and will still be owned by the members because the structure for the future includes the possibility of members subscribing for shares,” he said.
“So members that have renewed for this year have all been given one share in the new company – East Clare Development Village Ltd – so they still feel a part of it and treasure the fact that they still own their own golf course.”
Ger Teefy, Operational Director of East Clare Development Village, told the Nenagh Guardian last month that they are giving each member the gift of vacation club membership for the next three years, which has an estimated value of around €1,000.
“The week is fully transferable so can be shared with family and friends and can be used for breaks in other countries if exchanged through DAE (www.daelive.com), which allows people exchange holiday homes across the globe,” he said.
The long-term plan is to make the resort a more attractive prospect for visitors, especially families.
Martin added: “In four or five years time we hope to have a broad leisure development here for families who might not play golf but they will be able to have a swim and in turn, that will reinvigorate the golf club.
“Instead of dropping from just over 700 members to just over 350, we’d like to get back to a functional level of 400 to 500 members again.
“It’s about trying to reach a broader group of people and giving
them reasons to be here rather than other places.
“So we have to polish up our act and make sure we remain a high-quality course while also making sure there is something here for the non-golfer in the party, so everybody is happy to come to East Clare.
“The shame at the moment is that there are 10,000 visitors coming to the holiday village who are not coming here for golf.
“We have an opportunity to become more of a golf destination by making the wider family happy to come here because there is more than just golf to enjoy.
“The holiday club is let in its entirety to a holiday group called Diamond that guarantees occupancy almost all year round.
“They are coming for its location in the west of Ireland not because it is on the golf course. So we have an opportunity to plant that seed and get more of the visitors playing golf.”
“It’s very positive for the golf club,” added William O’Brien, Chairman of the club’s Course Development Committee.
“The general overall picture for golf worldwide is challenging, especially when it comes to falling membership.
“So to be part of a bigger enterprise and to have the opportunity to interact with the general populace in the broader sense when it comes to leisure is a tremendous opportunity for us. We are really looking forward to it.”
Times have certainly changed since East Clare Golf Course was founded by the late Tom Murray, Michael Hogan, Michael Fahy, John Joyce and TJ McNamara.
But with the sun peeping through the clouds again, the loyal members are not so much hoping for a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it but simply to ensure their club remains a vibrant, fun place to play the game they love.