By NOEL MURPHY
GEELONG Golf Club is set to be resurrected as a nine-hole course more than a decade after it was sold for $1.85 million then redeveloped as a $100 million estate for 320 homes.
Advertisements this week called for prospective operators of the course to register their interest with owner Geelong Golf Club Residential Estate.
The site was carved up after Links Group controversially bought the club while it was experiencing financial difficulties.
The club ignored higher alternative offers on the advice of golf management company PGA Links, which the Links Group and Professional Golfers Association of Australia set up and brought in to run the club in 2002. Geelong businessman John Wellham was reported to have offered $18 million.
The club was also reported to be worth an estimated $5 million several years before the sale to Links Group and the site’s rezoning for residential use.
The golf club, then the second oldest in Australia, lost its memorabilia in a 2007 fire.
Members also lost a Links offer of membership at Torquay’s Sands club and the proposed nine-hole course on the Geelong site was downgraded in size from 22 to 11.5 hectares.
The reduced course has nine holes, a practice range, a club building and pro shop space.
The club seeks a “suitably qualified, experienced and reputable” contractor to commercially operate the course and practice range as public play-for-pay facilities. The contractor would also run the pro shop and manage the club’s golf activities.
The job was described as “an exciting opportunity for an entrepreneurial operator to build a successful business”.
Housing works have been underway for several years on the former western reaches of the course, bounded by Ballarat and Thompson Rds. Allotments have been selling for up to $400,000.
Geelong Golf Club was established in 1892, closed in 2004 and lay idle and overgrown for years, drawing community criticism.
