USA Today “discovered” Hendersonville, NC, just last week in an article titled “5 Great (Unknown) Places to Retire” -- to which we say better late than never. We made our first trip to the western North Carolina mountains and the Hendersonville area in 2007 with a visit to the circa 1988 golf community of Champion Hills which sports a highly rated Tom Fazio golf course that has only improved over time –- with the member-owned club investing a few years ago in a major refurbishment of the layout. Since then, the Champion Hills layout has been ranked as highly as top 5 in North Carolina, lofty positioning in a state that includes Pinehurst #2, Wade Hampton Golf Club, Quail Hollow and a slew of other notable layouts.

Hendersonville, NC's Champion Hills is ranked as high as #5 in the golf rich state.

 

        We have always admired the clear-eyed, unemotional approach to governance Champion Hills club members and residents seem to take in the decision making about their community. That’s one reason they have come out the back end of the recession debt-free.

        “The club board and homeowner's association at Champion Hills…use a businesslike approach to governing, keeping personality and politics out of decisions,” we wrote in this space in 2007.  “It doesn't hurt to have a fine Fazio layout in which club members are willing to invest.”

        Now to “stay ahead of the curve” and the competition, says Brian Fitzgerald, the club’s membership committee chairman, the Champion Hills Board of Directors has put up three propositions for a vote of the membership. They are:

• A National Membership Program for new members who live outside Henderson County and its adjoining counties. The initiation fee is just $2,500 with dues of either $2,500 annually or 25% of the prevailing dues for full members (currently $9,000), whichever is higher. The program is aimed squarely at the population centers of Atlanta, Charlotte and Knoxville.
• A new “Legacy” program for current members that permits all direct family members –- from grandchildren up to grandparents –- to enjoy the same privileges as the member of record and his/her spouse, at no additional cost of green fees. “[The program] will increase usage by members and their families,” says Fitzgerald, “will encourage members to hang on to their memberships, and will attract new members who have children who will use the club.”
• For the first time, non-property owners are invited to join Champion Hills. Outside membership will be capped at 25 members.

        The club also announced recently a special promotion that pegs initiation fees at just $25,000 for the first 25 members who sign up. The number 25 has special meaning for Champion Hills because this is the golf community’s -– and the club’s -– 25^th anniversary. Regular initiation fees have been pegged at $50,000 for the past few years after reaching a pre-recession high of $85,000; a little more than half of those fees were refundable. But the club’s board eliminated the refunds for new members when it lowered regular initiation fees to $50,000.

        Current full-golf memberships at Champion Hills is 225, and club officials are hoping to add about 60 new full golf members with the special promotion and the national and legacy memberships. They appear to be well on their way; Fitzgerald says that nine new members are waiting in the wings to sign up once members vote affirmatively, even though the club has not promoted the initiatives. Two of those members are from outside the gates and seven others are friends of current Champion Hills residents looking to take advantage of the bargain “national” member rate.

        Voting on the Board-endorsed initiatives ends in less than two weeks after the required 30-day voting period.

        According to an article today by Keith Jarrett in the Asheville Citizen-Times, current owners of The Cliffs Communities in the Carolinas say any hopes of Tiger Woods completing his first American design at the Cliffs at High Carolina community are gone.

        “His deal didn’t make it through bankruptcy,” said Brett Johnston, CEO of Cliffs Land Partners. “We don’t have any deal with Tiger. We don’t have any relationship with him, business or otherwise.” (Otherwise?)

        Readers of this blog may recall that Woods’ first golf course in America was to occupy the top of a mountain about a half-hour drive from

Asheville. Originally marketed as a “walking-only” course to buttress Cliffs Founder Jim Anthony’s emphasis on wellness, the developer later announced, as the economy was unraveling and with it sales at High Carolina, that carts would be permitted. That about-face turned out to be the least of The Cliffs’ marketing problems with High Carolina.

        At about the time The Cliffs erected billboards in the Asheville area featuring a giant-sized Tiger Woods indicating what “inspired” him at High Carolina, the global star ran his SUV into a tree just outside his Florida home on Thanksgiving night 2009. (At least one of those billboards is still standing.) The resulting bad publicity about his personal peccadilloes, his high-profile (and expensive) divorce, and the erosion of his golfing skills from which he has only just recovered three years later, combined with the sinking economy, further exacerbated The Cliffs problems in selling lots at High Carolina that were priced at $1 million and higher.

        Although the star’s golf architecture business, Tiger Woods Design, saw its first three global projects (Dubai, Mexico and High Carolina) halted because of the economy, it is back in business with a golf course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where ground was broken last October. Winning again solves a lot of problems for Tiger, who has recouped most of his annual rate of income that he lost during his fall from grace. But it is too late from High Carolina. The new Cliffs owners are fully non-committal about the future of the community, with or without a golf course, although the status of the welcome sign at the gated front entrance to the community may be both revealing and symbolic. How much, after all, does it cost to take a scythe and lawn mower to the tall weeds around the sign?

        “We will wait two or three years and see where we are,” Johnston told reporter Jarrett of the Citizen-Times. “That will tell us a lot.”  (To read the full Citizen-Times article, click here.)

A Tiger Woods golf course at The Cliffs Communities will never open, but in the next few months, The Cliffs will debut Gary Player's layout at Mountain Park.  (Photo looking down the 17th fairway from the tee taken late last year.)