It’s back – The Front Royal Golf Club will remain open for coming year(s)

Like a Phoenix rising from its own ashes, on Monday, June 29, the VA. Golf LLC management team gathered a four-person majority of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, Archie Fox dissenting, to resurrect the Front Royal Golf Club less than two days before its planned closing. That closing seemed cemented for the July 1st start of the new fiscal year after another four-person county board majority, Tony Carter dissenting, rejected the VA. Golf LLC’s initial management offer six days earlier.

All it took was the “little more skin in the game” County Board Chair Walt Mabe asked for on Tuesday, June 23rd. That skin amounted to a $49,000 turnaround in year one of a three-year initial lease period, followed by a minimum $37,000 turnaround in the years that follow.

Rather than the County paying the largely in-house management team $25,000 per year to try to turn an operation losing somewhere over $110,000 annually in recent years, Va. Golf LLC will pay the County $2,000 a month in the first year, followed by $1,000 per month in subsequent years, plus 5% of the management team’s profits, if there are profits.

I’m growing fond of this perspective of our now-resurrected municipal golf course – maybe I’ll learn to yell ‘Fore’ in my declining athletic years. File Photo/FR Golf Club website

And that Louis Nicholls and Ray Nash expect to be able to turn a profit from an aggressively managed, member and guest-friendly golf and clubhouse-based recreational facility along the banks of the Shenandoah River, seems apparent. And it is a belief shared by past members, including a recent Royal Examiner Letter to the Editor writer with membership and golf course work experience, skeptical of the County’s ability or interest in the successful management of a municipal golf club.

Louis Nicholls and Ray Nash expect to be able to turn a profit from an aggressively managed, member and guest-friendly golf and clubhouse-based recreational facility. Royal Examiner photo and video by Mark Williams.

How long that municipal golf club-based management lease will run depends on a variety of variables. The base term is a three-year lease with three, three-year renewal options at the management team’s discretion for a potential 12-years at the helm of what had become a money-pit for a county management team that, as noted above, some club members in recent years felt was unequipped, or uninterested in the successful management of the course on land gifted to this community’s citizens for golf and other recreational opportunities 82 years ago.

In making the motion to accept the proposal and authorize Chairman Mabe to sign a contract on behalf of the County to facilitate operations not ceasing between Tuesday and Wednesday, Cheryl Cullers told Nicholls and Nash that unlike the earlier rejection of a $100,000 management proposal the County would have had to pay to keep the course open, she had felt the passion of the VA. Golf LLC team and had felt bad about its rejection on a fiscal hard line that the County would pour no more money into the support of the course.

“You’re on my prayer list,” Culler said for their success.

“We’re on our prayer list too,” Nicholls said of the new offer that promises payment to the county regardless of when the course turns profitable for VA. Golf LLC.

Only the Fork District’s Fox decided to look this “gift horse in the mouth” saying he preferred an extra $500 cash added to the $1,000 per month payments as opposed to 5% of profits over subsequent years of the lease.

Supervisor Carter countered that 5% of profits could reflect additional income if the course became profitable in the coming years. And he told Fox, VA. Golf LLC would also be paying BPOL and sales taxes to the county on its operations, again adding income the County would not otherwise have.

Not enough, want more cash, not anticipated profits, Archie Fox told the management team.

However, Fox remained negative to the proposal, casting the lone dissenting vote.

There was no public comment, and since the special meeting was for reconsideration of a counteroffer made in the wake of last Tuesday’s public hearing and rejection of their original proposal, no public hearing at Monday’s 35-minute meeting.

See the VA. Golf LLC presentation, their counter to Fox’s arguments, and the board discussion and vote in this exclusive Royal Examiner video: