Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
BROAD RUN
GOLF COURSE THRIVING UNDER LOCAL OWNERSHIP
WEST BRADFORD – For a dozen years and seemingly as many general managers, Broad Run Golfer’s Club has been a promising venue that’s been dogged by some serious financial woes.
But the latest G.M., Jeff Broadbelt, has been heavily involved in a bunch of local golf facilities during the course of a long career and is confident that the 18-hole championship course about five miles west of West Chester can finally realize
“This
golf course is an awesome, firstclass design, and we are going to put more money and more elbow grease into it .”
JEFF BROADBELT Broad Run Golfer’s Club general manager its potential.
“We are fortunate enough to be the last ones in line and we are going to make it happen,” vowed Broadbelt, a longtime Malvern resident. “There is no doubt about it.”
Broadbelt was hand-picked by new owner Jonathan Byler to oversee the transformation of Broad Run – formerly Tattersall Golf Club – into a financially sound enterprise that is conditioned and managed the way a premier daily fee course should be. And Broadbelt is just one of several in the new management team with strong local ties.
“This is the first time, realistically speaking, this place has had a real local group that is running the club,” said Broadbelt, who last held a similar position at Spring Hollow Golf Club near Spring City several years ago.
“We’re local guys and we have an enthusiasm that I think is important. This management group takes pride in what we are doing here. Our neighbors would look at us funny if we didn’t.”
Following a lengthy period on the market, Byler purchased Broad Run in early May for $2 million, which is more than $10 million less than it cost to design and build the place in 2000. The Lebanon County entrepreneur also owns Iron Valley Golf Club in Lebanon, Blue Mountain Golf Course in Fredericksburg and Lebanon Valley Golf Course in Myerstown.
In addition to Broadbelt, Byler brought in three other key locals: head professional Pete Lovenguth, from Downingtown Country Club; Superintendent Chad Rightmyer from French Creek Golf Club near Elverson; and Executive Chef Jamie Nafe from Firecreek Restaurant in Downingtown.
“This golf course is an awesome, first-class design,” Broadbelt said, “and we are going to put more money and more elbow grease into it.”
To understand where Broad Run is, you have to go back to the beginning, when world-renowned course architect Rees Jones was commissioned to design a 6,800-yard course on 372 acres of rolling countryside in West Bradford. It was constructed on land that was formerly the Como Farm, which was the home to pioneering colonial agriculturist John Beale Bordley (1727-1804).
The original owners, Forewinds Hospitality in New York, shelled out about $13 million for the property and the course, and were charging a hefty top-end greens fee of $120 on weekend mornings. At the height of the golf bust in 2006, however, Forewinds wanted out and sold to Dallas-based Pegasus Golf Partners for about $5 million. That’s when the name switched from Tattersall to Broad Run.
Soon thereafter, Pegasus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and ownership shifted to the bank -- Capmark Financial Group -which tapped Sequoia Golf in Georgia to manage the property. But just like the previous owners, it was a money-losing proposition due to the debt, which helped lead Capmark into bankruptcy in 2009.
“Nobody had to bail because they were incompetent,” said Broadbelt, who served as the point man for local businessman Jack Loew’s golf holdings (Downingtown Country Club, Ingleside Golf Club, French Creek Golf Club) for many years. “What caused the past failures is that they all paid too much for the product. If you want to blame it on anything, it’s that the financial guys didn’t have a crystal ball to know that the economy was going to drop.”
That leads us to Byler, who bought Broad Run for less than one-sixth of what it cost to get off the ground in 2000. There are plans to pump about $200,000 into the facility, mostly to offset years of cutting corners which resulted in some conditioning issues.
“Architecturally, this place is pretty set,” Broadbelt said. “That’s not to say I won’t investigate building a forward tee or rebuilding a bunker here or there, but right now it’s all about conditioning.
“The previous owners let a lot of areas grow in order to save labor. In some cases, it led to some cool meadows, but it got out of hand. They were growing grass bunkers off the back of greens and we actually had small trees coming up.”
A lot of the overgrown fescue has been cut back, and Broadbelt believes the course is already more playable. The top end greens fee has also been chopped to $79 and is down to $36-$56 range on weekdays.
Broad Run’s restaurant, the Bordley House Grille, opened to rave reviews more than a decade ago but has been neglected in recent years. It now features a new seasonally rotated menu, on-site vegetable and herb garden, and craft beers.
“We have a great demographic here,” Broadbelt said. “The problem is that people that normally don’t travel in this area tend to get lost out here. I am going to put up signs out on Strasburg and Telegraph Road to help get them here.”