Area golfers have lost another public option to play their weekend rounds. Last month, the award-winning Cape Fear National Golf Club, which winds its way through Leland’s Brunswick Forest neighborhood, was sold to the Heritage Golf Group.
The transaction totaled $12 million. In addition to Cape Fear National, the Heritage Group also purchased Brunswick Plantation Golf Club in Calabash. Previously both properties were owned by the Atlantic Golf Management Corporation.
Heritage plans on keeping Brunswick Plantation a public course, including doing massive repairs to update the course condition with the possibilities of new greens and bunkers. Meanwhile, Heritage will transition Cape Fear National into a fully private course where members have to pay a one-time fee followed by annual dues.
With the purchase, Heritage Golf now owns 20 courses in nine states. Cape Fear National and Brunswick Plantation become the company’s first holdings in the Myrtle Beach/Wilmington market.
“Between North Carolina and South Carolina, it’s certainly an area we wanted to find some opportunities to get some club presence,” Heritage CEO Mark Burnett told the Myrtle Beach Times. “My hope is if it goes well – and we anticipate and hope it will – we absolutely would be interested in continuing to grow in both markets.”
In recent years, public golfers have witnessed the Compass Pointe course turn from public to private, while also watching a handful of other public courses closed down with owners choosing to sell their land to real estate developers.
Cape Fear National opened in 2009. The 7,217 yard course was named one of the Top 10 Best New Courses in America by Golf Magazine in 2010. It features forests of mature oaks, maples, pines and magnolias.
Before the sale Cape Fear National was operating as a semi-private club with 71 members. In less than a month, membership jumped up to 500 with a waiting list.