Featherston Golf Club (NZ) up for sale to highest bidder

Featherston Golf Club announced in July that it was going to have to close its 18-hole course due to financial difficulties.

Now it’s for sale to the highest bidder and its owners hope the links will remain.

With a current Rateable Value of $1.02 million, Benn Milne of Property Brokers has been hawking the course lock, stock and barrell to golfers nationwide.

He was confident he could find a buyer, or a group of buyers, among the country’s 100,000 avid golfers and keep it running as a private course.

“We’re in the mindset that once the course is gone, it’s gone. You’ll never be able to reproduce a 116-year-old golf course again,” Milne said.

Covering a 32 hectare block around 2 kilometres south of Featherston, the land was not suitable for residential development and would likely otherwise be converted back into farmland.

“There are so many people who don’t know that Featherston has a golf course and if we can get someone that treats it as a business, it could have potential,” Milne said.

He has contacted more than 200 golf associations and has had strong interest from the Auckland region where he recently marketed it at a home show.

Featherston Golf Club owns the land and the course will remain open until the end of October with a final tournament on the 14th of that month.

Club captain Charlie Fairbrother said their incorporated society was yet to make a decision on what they would do with the proceeds of the sale, but they were in talks with other clubs in the region about the possibility of a merger.

It is not the only rural New Zealand golf course to hit the market recently. Timaru’s St Andrew’s Golf Course was put up for sale last week.

Its agent Stu Piddington of Harcourts said the 32 ha property had a Rateable Value of $1.14m but would probably sell for less.

“I could confidently say it’ll go for under a million.”

Carl Fenton of New Zealand Golf said it would be sad to lose any course.

“So investigating all options to ensure a financially viable and growing facility is good practice.”

Golf clubs added value to their communities beyond those people who played golf.

“The facilities provide positive impact through economic, social and community, environmental and health and well-being outcomes also.”

Source: Stuff