This is a bad look for Faxon

[ShortStick]

Metacomet is circling the drain and will be plowed under. This is a bad look for Brad Faxon. Ironically probably a no brained business decision, but he had to know the financials a year ago when he heroically promised to nurture the D Ross course back to life. https://www.golocalprov.com/news/broken-promises-documents-show-faxon-and-partners-assured-metacomet-million

[leerob3]

Ouch! What a shame to lose a course with such history, Fax your better than this.

[Les Strokes]

yes losing a historic course is a shame. But we don't know if Faxon voted against this and got out-voted. Unfortunate the club didn't have more time and support so it could be a sustainable business.

[MountainGoat]

Tour players should not be associated with real estate groups that plow under golf courses. This is a terrible look.

 

[RyanBarathWRX]

Over the next decade this is going to happen a lot more to private clubs in North America as demographics shift, and the unsustainable model of the private club "lifestyle" slowly disappears for clubs of a certain level. For Big Name clubs in highly populated areas this will be less of an issue but in less populated areas where the 30-45 years olds that used to make up the bulk of the clubs population are now older and that age group in the club shrinks its a recipe for this.

This has nothing to do with Brad as a person or a golfer. Shame because it seems like a nice golf course but at the end of the day you cant expect anyone to operate a club / course out of the goodness of their heart when its loosing money.

[raynorfan1]

While your overall analysis of the market is directionally correct, this says a lot about Faxon as a person.

His involvement with the investor group led the membership to sell at a discount to their group, believing that they would be good stewards of the course. The membership could have sold out to developers a year ago and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars each. They bought into Brad’s vision for the course...and now he’s the one pocketing their tens of thousands of dollars.

This is an absolute disgrace of a move and says a lot about Faxon’s character.

[sheldonjhacker]

No surprise here...Faxon has always been a fake good guy. Just ask his ex wife.

[fore_life]

I don’t trust anyone over the age of 8 that has hair like that

[farmer]

No one knows what role BF played in the decision to sell. He may have been jumping up and down to save it, but was not able to carry the day. It's a shame the course didn't do enough business to be viable, but sunk cost is real. Way too harsh a judgement on Faxon.

[caniac6]

If I were him, I'd make it clear if that's the case. I bet he takes the money, though.

[raynorfan1]

Pretty easy for him to take his share of the profits and give it back to the members.

[b.helts]

Oh please! lol

like that’s going to happen. If, and it’s a big if in my mind, The members had an offer to sell to developers and then sold out to Faxon for less on the promise of revitalization of their country club, this looks bad.

but the article did not say that. And if the members thought that, it should have been in the sales agreement.

this sounds to me like the members were in deep shit and got bailed out. Now they’re upset because Faxon and Co bought up all their debt and is now offloading it. I just don’t see the problem here. It’s what real estate investment firms do.

[LeoLeo99]

Maybe if they weren't so stuffy... BK could have been a member and revitalized the club.

[raynorfan1]

The members sold (/gave) it to the Faxon group for the value of the debt on the books - $2.2M. They rejected higher offers from others who wanted to make it a public course, and refused to consider offers from people who were not going to maintain it as a golf course.

One year later, Faxon sells it for $13M to be plowed under for mixed use development.

One perspective is that it’s “just business”...which is fine. The membership should have done a better job deed restricting the property. Fine.

Still an absolute dirtbag move by Faxon.

[b.helts]

If that’s all true, I agree.

and having seen some of your posts previously, I’m inclined to believe you.

[cbbaron]

Faxon just needs the dough to pay for the expensive divorce

[Sean2]

It seems the members were under the impression that Faxon, et al, were committed to keeping the course open.

“Throughout this evaluation process, our team has tried to convey to you our long-term vision for the future of Metacomet. This vision starts with the all-in commitment and enthusiasm of Rhode Island’s world-renowned ambassador to the game of golf, Brad Faxon.“

 

[Dog Lover]

"this sounds to me like the members were in deep **** and got bailed out"

How would 2.2 million of debt on that piece of property be considered being "in deep *****"?

[b.helts]

So I just read the article that was posted. Raynor clearly has more informations and maybe you do too.

but the article said the course was days away from a tax sale for back taxes and unpaid utilities. They clearly couldn’t pay the bills and sold it off because they had to.

the article also said they bypassed “another competitive bid” which to me reads as if there were two similar bids. Not one massive bid from a developer and the Faxon bid.

maybe I read it wrong or the article is misleading. I mean, raynor said fax is selling it for $13mm. That doesn’t really impress me with regards to “that piece of property”.

[raynorfan1]

To be fair, nobody should look at this like it was a great and healthy club that got swindled by Faxon. The club had prototypical membership demographic issues and was struggling.

They had a handful of significant debts (including tax liens) that put the club at risk for foreclosure. In that scenario, there were basically two choices:

(1) find a buyer who would inject the capital required to make the economics of the club work as a golf course; or,

(2) allow the foreclosure to run its course, which would ultimately result in the auction of the property to the highest bidder, which would likely be a developer. In this case, the members would have divided the proceeds after the debts were paid off (which likely would have been $10,000 - $20,000 per member).

The Faxon group rolled in as heroes in the #1 scenario. And then basically ran an auction and captured all of the proceeds for themselves.

In retrospect, and I hope other clubs learn from this, the membership should have negotiated a buyback right for some period of time, but I think they were won over by Faxon’s star power.

[Dog Lover]

Not rocket science. If you owe $2.2 million on something that someone else with cash values at $13 million, you are not in "deep ****" . Having played 2 New England Ams there, it is a beautiful piece of property on the bay. Really do not care whether some random guy on the internet is impressed or not

[b.helts]

Hey man. I get it. It’s personal for you. Definitely sucks.

As I said before, if what was said earlier is true, definitely a bait and switch and a dirtbag move by Faxon ‘s group.

But there is still some question in my mind how the membership let it get to this point.

[ButterCutter2]

lots of coverage on this topic on NLU refuge message board, but this is a good read on what happened as well: https://www.northeast.golf/2020/02/29/csi-metacomet/

 

not so cut & dry that faxon screwed over the club in a money grab.

[Malvern]

I will never likely set foot on Rhode Island, question for some who might know. Is it a relatively simple matter to get approval (from whoever) to develop a golf course property like this into a resi/retail? Or do the guys who bought off Faxon's group assume all the risk in getting approvals.

Seems a great piece of property on the water, don't the present residents object, no green space concerns, environmental etc?

[Hawkeye77]

Right - to the people that took the club to the verge of tax sale and bankruptcy, lol.

[Zac1321]

That was an interesting read, also wouldnt surprise me one bit, if everyhting in the article is true, that those handful of committee members who selected which bid was presented to the membership received a healthy kick back from the faxon group. Outside of that i can see no reason why they would have chosen to go that route versus at the very least presenting the other offers

[raynorfan1]

Rhode Island is like mini Illinois. You know the right people and line the right pockets, you do whatever you want.

[raynorfan1]

Tax Sale / bankruptcy is being presented as some kind of doomsday scenario here, but it actually would have been financially better for the membership to have it go to bankruptcy auction than to sell to Faxon et al.

The club had a structural cash flow problem which could not be solved, but assets (the land) that we’re far more valuable than the debts ($2.2M of tax liens and bank debt). If the tax man had forced the club to foreclosure, it still would have sold to the highest bidder for something like $10M - leaving the members with ~$8M after paying off the debts.

Faxon rolls in with a plan to ‘save’ the club...but a actually just scrapes the $8M from the members to his investor group.

To be clear, the club probably could not have been saved. The question is just who deserves the proceeds of the dissolution.

[Hawkeye77]

That's a value judgment, but "deserve" is really nothing more than whatever the contract provides, and they are out.

Hard to believe the membership didn't know its situation at least as well as you represent it to be (and maybe it was that simple) and if the members' desire to keep a golf course got in the way of being realistic and studying what you claim could have been a big payday, that's on them.

Faxon owes them nothing and did nothing wrong.

I laughed at one of the articles someone posted about the transaction - agenda was pretty clear. First quote raking Faxon over the coals was from someone who quit the club in 2017 because he got assessed $1500 --kind of puts why it was failing and why it failed into perspective.

Anyway, members can whine all they want after the fact, but if that money was that "sure" they should have taken it.

As a whole, based on the unbiased info presented in an account above, they were just plain dumb about it.

[PostandGhost]

When I clicked on the thread, I thought it was going to have a picture of Faxon using a long putter.