Dismay as golf club loses chance to secure new site
Maidenhead: Bid to buy Winter Hill misses the cut after lengthy negotiations
Maidenhead Golf Club is ‘really frustrated’ by the result of a lost bid to secure the Winter Hill Golf Club for its own needs.
The John Lewis Partnership (JLP) went in a different direction – despite long-running discussions with MGC about the club procuring the Cookham site.
MGC chairman Paul
Louden said the club was ‘very disappointed’ as it felt this ‘was a good possibility,’ something that ‘might have benefited all of the golfers in the Maidenhead area.’
“The membership’s been wonderful, they supported us with a huge vote in favour at the EGM. They’re the same, they’re very upset and disappointed – disappointed is the least of the words,” Paul said.
“We spent the last two and a half years in discussions with John Lewis before they changed their minds twice in the last couple of months.
That was all very disappointing as well.
“We’re just really frustrated at the situation we’ve ended up with.”
The club is now looking at what can be done for the future. It will be working on that from the next board meeting, which takes places next week.
“There’s another two and a half years still until we have to move off the site,” said Paul.
“In terms of purchasing another golf course, that looks very difficult now.
“Creating another golf course was going to take a lot longer than two and a half years. We already voted against that – I don’t know if that would come into play again.
“It’s very difficult to get anything together and it will be difficult to hold all the members together in a changing environment like this,” Paul added.
“We’ll just have to see how it goes for the next year. We don’t know what the future will bring so we’re looking forwards and that’s the best we can do.”
A spokesperson for JLP said: “We’re sorry [MGC is] disappointed by this outcome but we have to do the right thing for our business and our partners.
“As neither party reached the stage of signing an exclusive agreement, we made clear that we were putting the process to sealed bids.”