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Owner Joel Young has again told his employees and the membership
of the Wake Forest Golf and Country Club that the club is closing and is being
sold.
In February of 2006 Young also announced
the 147-acre course had been sold to Centex Homes for homes ranging up to $1
million. The land was apparently under option, not sold, because Centex
announced in April 2006 it would not be building homes there.
In a letter sent to the club members
dated Oct. 1, Young said the club had operated at a loss over the last four
years. “As I mentioned in a letter to the members in February, 2006, I have
decided the most viable option available is to sell the club.”
Young says in the letter that he has
worked with “respected real estate professionals. I have spent significant time
investigating many companies and proposed plans for the property.”
He does not mention any developer or
reveal any plans. The letter does say the members and adjoining property owners
will be invited to an informational meeting about the development plans in the
near future.
Young says the club will close on
Monday, Nov. 19, and the last day of play will be Sunday, Nov. 18.
Word of the closing and proposed
sale began circulating Tuesday. That day Hubert Jenks said he had learned Young
has told his employees the 18-hole golf course would close on Nov. 18 and “he
had sold it to a developer which will be building high-end homes.”
Jenks is the chairman of the
neighborhood group that was formed after Young announced the 2006 sale, the
Concerned Citizens for the Preservation of Wake Forest Golf Club. After he
received the letter from Young Wednesday, Jenks gave a copy to the Gazette.
Although there is no firm information
about the developer, Tommy Fonville is apparently involved in the development
or was. Fonville is an executive with Fonville Morisey Realty in Raleigh and
was present at a meeting last spring with Young and Wake Forest Deputy Planning
Director Chad Sary in which Young and one or two others whom Sary could not
remember presented a preliminary sketch for 140 lots.
Sary said he never heard from Young
or Fonville again. “There is no official plan submitted,” he said Tuesday. “I
thought it was dead, but it’s back.”
Fonville was out of his office this
week and Young did not return telephone calls about the sale and proposed
development.
Any plan would face substantial
challenges.
The land is in the Falls Lake
watershed and is zoned R-40W, which requires an acre, 40,000 square feet, for each
house. The sketch indicates the developer plans 117 homes on 15,000-square-foot
lots and 25 on 30,000-square-foot lots. Planning Director Chip Russell said the
residential zoning designation was a fallback zoning when the golf course was
annexed by the town in 1999.
It was annexed because Young wanted
water and sewer to build homes on the course. The town approved a planned unit
development that year which designated four separate tracts. One tract was for 20
townhouses, and Fairway Villas was built. The second tract was also for
townhouses, and Clubhouse Villas was built. The third tract called for
zero-lot-line homes, but these were never built, and the fourth tract, a small
one, was for commercial use on land near Capital Boulevard and just to the
right of the entrance. That tract was recently purchased by Wake Union Baptist
Church, which abuts it.
Under the PUD conditions, the
remainder of the land was designated as a golf course. Sary said this week that
the PUD conditions still apply. “The PUD stays with the land, not the owners.”
The conditions could be amended, but that would require the planning and town
boards to agree to the change.
Information about the PUD conditions
came from Mike Perry, who investigated and wrote a letter to Young and Centex
in 2006. Perry is an attorney with Warren Perry & Anthony but acted then in
his private capacity.
There are also environmental
concerns. The land is bisected by Horse Creek and at least 15 acres along that
stream are floodplains. There are strict Neuse River Buffer rules about any
activity in the buffers along streams such as this.
Young purchased the golf course in
1984 for $1.2 million. Wake County records give the current value at $3.5
million. Later in the 1980s he subdivided some of the land and sold lots in
Country Club Downs, which is accessed from Purnell Road.
The Concerned Citizens for the Preservation of Wake Forest
Golf Club is sponsoring a candidates’ forum Monday, Oct. 15, beginning at 6 p.m.
at The Forks Cafeteria. Jenks said he thought the timing is ideal to air
concerns about the golf course.
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