New Local Golf Resort – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Town of Rome — A Chicago businessman who turned the tiny coastal town of Bandon, Ore., into one of the world’s premier golf destinations is planning to build a similar multi-course resort on sand dunes that formed the bottom of a prehistoric lake in what is now Adams County.

Mike Keiser’s project, named Sand Valley, could include up to four courses and lodging spread over 1,500 acres of remote sand barren about 15 miles south of Wisconsin Rapids.

If successful — and Keiser’s track record suggests it will be — Sand Valley would join the Kohler Co. golf properties near Sheboygan and Erin Hills near Hartford to make Wisconsin a top destination for traveling golfers.

“It would make Wisconsin the best summertime place for golf in the world,” Keiser said.

Keiser, who made his fortune in greeting cards, has signed an agreement to purchase about 2.4 square miles of land from Plum Creek Timber Co. The closing is set for Dec. 17, at which time Keiser is expected to name the architect for the first course.

If all goes according to plan, construction would begin in 2014 and the first course would open in late 2016 or early 2017. The Oliphant Companies, a Madison-based golf construction and management firm, will build the courses.

Sand Valley, if fully realized, would create hundreds of jobs. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin Rapids (pop. 18,367) is about 8%, according to Mayor Zach Vruwink, and the region is still struggling in the wake of the 2008 closing of the Port Edwards paper mill.

“There is no question this would be a significant positive contributor to the local economy and to the state,” Vruwink said. “Personally, I’m in favor of it. Absolutely.”

For months, golf bloggers and course architect buffs have been buzzing about Keiser’s interest in the site and what it could mean. He is considered a visionary, a man who has turned desolate locations into acclaimed golf resorts with a daring “build it and they will come” philosophy.

Keiser is founder and owner of Bandon Dunes, a five-course, 85-hole complex on a remote stretch of southern Oregon coastline that is regarded by many purists as the finest resort in the world. All four 18-hole courses at Bandon Dunes are ranked among the top 11 resort courses in America by Golfweek magazine, including No. 1 Pacific Dunes (Kohler-owned Whistling Straits is No. 4).

Those who play the minimalist Bandon courses, which are unencumbered by real-estate development and reminiscent of the ancient seaside links in the British Isles, almost universally rave about the experience. Bandon is on every serious golfer’s must-play list.

Keiser also is involved in acclaimed multi-course developments in central Florida, Nova Scotia and Tasmania.

He said the location in Wisconsin reminded him of Pine Valley, the ultra-private club in New Jersey and a fixture atop the annual magazine rankings of best courses in the world. That speaks to the quality of the sandy site two miles east of Petenwell Lake, where bald eagles soar, gray wolves roam — and where bullet indentations riddle the stop sign at the dirt-road entrance.

Sand 100 feet deep
Sand is considered the ideal substructure for golf courses because it drains well and many strains of grass thrive in it. Herbert Kohler Jr. trucked in thousands of truckloads of sand to build Whistling Straits. At Sand Valley, the sand is 100 feet deep.

Keiser plans to harvest tens of thousands of red pine trees on the site, expose the sand and native ground cover and integrate it into the golf course designs.

“What this wants to be is a dunes system,” said Craig Haltom, vice president of The Oliphant Companies. “We’re going to restore it to sand barren. Globally, that’s a rare ecosystem.”

Keiser is considering three architects for the first course: Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, all of whom designed minimalist, links-type courses at Bandon Dunes. Routing would start in May, rough grading would begin in the summer and the course would be completed in 2015.

Following a one-year grow-in period, it would open to the public in late 2016 or early 2017.

Green fees would be $125 to $150. Keiser is undecided about whether it will be a walking-only course or whether motorized carts will be allowed. That decision will determine the type of turfgrass used. In any case, walking will be encouraged and there will be a caddie program.

The success of the first course, which will include a modest clubhouse and cost between $5 million and $6.5 million to build, will determine whether more courses follow.

“We won’t find out until the golfers come or do not come and then return or do not return,” Keiser said. “If they don’t like Pine Valley in Wisconsin, there will be one course.”

Haltom said the site was big enough to accommodate seven 18-hole courses, though a more realistic number would be three or four. Almost no one thinks Keiser will stop at one course unless it is an abject failure, which isn’t likely given his history of success.

At Bandon Dunes, Keiser’s first course generated $4 million in annual revenue. When he added a second course and lodging, revenue tripled to $12 million.

“Or, one plus one equals three,” he told a group of potential investors during a recent presentation at the University Club in Milwaukee. “I’ve tried that same formula in Tasmania, at Barnbougle Dunes and Lost Farm. It has tracked exactly the way Bandon Dunes has done.”

What’s remarkable about Keiser’s approach is that it seemingly flies in the face of what makes financial sense. Golf course development in the U.S. has largely dried up in recent years, a victim of the economic downturn. Course closures have outnumbered openings, and many architects have moved to Asia, the only place they can find jobs.

Such is Keiser’s reputation, however, that nearly 100 investors have paid $50,000 each to be founding members of Sand Valley. Few have seen the site, other than in photos in the prospectus and a computer-generated video that imagines what the courses would look like.

Vruwink said he had not heard of any local opposition to Sand Valley.

“No, not publicly. Not anything directed to me,” the Wisconsin Rapids mayor said. “Again, if the numbers pan out, that really could be a significant employer, no question. And there would be entrepreneurial opportunities for other businesses, restaurants and hotels.”

Welcome from competitors
Darryl Sorbo, the head golf professional at Lake Arrowhead, a 36-hole public facility that is adjacent to the Sand Valley site, said he had no problem with a huge golf complex going up one mile down the road.

“We think it’s going to be great for the area,” he said. “It will be a great asset. I’ve got to believe it will help us all.”

Sorbo said Sand Valley likely would bring more business to the area’s existing courses: Lake Arrowhead, Northern Bay in Arkdale, private Bull’s Eye Country Club in Wisconsin Rapids (which Oliphant manages) and SentryWorld in Stevens Point, which is undergoing a top-to-bottom renovation and is scheduled to re-open in late 2014.

“We’re embracing it,” Sorbo said. “We’ll get people who have never come to this part of the country. (Keiser) has the Midas touch. Obviously, he knows how to market his courses.”

Keiser said environmental groups should be pleased that the Sand Valley site will be returned to its natural state. There are no wetlands on the property, and it has never been farmed.

“The DNR visited and said this will be the biggest restoration of a sand barren ever tried,” he said. “Picture 1,500 acres of sand with some scrub oak and jack pine. You’ll see a lot of sand with natural ground cover. It’s important that it look the way it should, which means removing all vestiges of the red pine and restoring the sand barren.

“That will make conservationists happy, and it will make golfers happy.”

An endangered bird, the Kirtland’s warbler, has been observed nesting in Adams County but not on the Sand Valley site. Kim Grveles, an avian ecologist with the Department of Natural Resources, has walked the property and said she had no concerns.

“It’s a few miles from where the Kirtland’s is currently nesting,” Grveles said. “It’s not an area where Kirtland’s are likely to occur. It’s one of the last remaining big blocks of forest in Adams County and I don’t like to see it developed for that reason, but the project itself is not going to impact the Kirtland’s.”

Keiser’s friends told him he was crazy when he built Bandon Dunes, insisting that golfers would never travel to such a remote site. He held his breath and hoped the initial course would generate 10,000 rounds in its first year (1999), which would represent break-even. Instead, it generated 24,000 rounds and unprecedented reviews.

Still, he wasn’t looking for another place to build courses when Haltom contacted him about the land he’d discovered in 2007 while scouting for potential golf sites. Keiser sent Josh Lesnik, the president of KemperSports, which manages Bandon Dunes, to give the land a cursory look.

“I said, ‘Josh, I do not want to like this but let’s be nice to Craig,’ ” Keiser recalled. “Josh came up and was stunned to find 60- to 80-foot sand dunes. You would never know driving by. And he concluded, correctly, that this was a wonderful site for golf in a minimalist, classical way.

“Basically everyone who has seen it has said, ‘This is a lot like Pine Valley and Sand Hills and National Golf Links’ — a lot of the old, great courses. I decided that even though I didn’t need another site, I would build Sand Valley.”

His history suggests that if he builds it, they will come.

This is approximately 15 minutes south of NEPCO Lake.