“Whilst there is sadness in [the] closure of the Cranbourne Golf Club, we look forward to the opportunity to assist so many in need within our community,” said Cranbourne Country Club president Brad Wein.
Cranbourne GC slated to be $150m housing site
Cranbourne Golf Club was built for the city’s Jewish community 70 years ago on a site purchased for £20,000 and has now been listed for sale as a future housing estate with an asking price of more than $150 million.
Cranbourne Golf Course opened in 1954 after a group of prominent Melbourne Jews, led by Sydney Kaufman, Harold Lasky and Harry Cohen, purchased a 300ha site in the city’s south-east and raised money via a door-knocking campaign from the local Jewish community to fund the design and construction of the course and clubhouse.
Mr Kaufman and his Jewish colleagues formed the idea to develop a golf club after Melbourne Jews were barred from joining the city’s many other private clubs due to antisemitic practices of the time.
In response to this discrimination, membership of Cranbourne Golf Club was open to anyone provided they were of “good golfing character”.
The development of the Cranbourne Golf Club followed the opening of Sydney’s first Jewish golf club, the Monash Country Club in Ingleside in the city’s northern suburbs in 1950.
The decision to sell the Melbourne club – considered one of the city’s best “sand belt” courses and location for many tournaments – follows a $120 million merger agreement struck with the Huntingdale Golf Club in Oakleigh in 2022.
Under the deal, Huntingdale agreed to accept Cranbourne members in exchange for an immediate $10 million cash injection for Huntingdale course renovations.
Alongside the listing of Cranbourne Golf Course, bids have sharpened for Kingswood Golf Course in Dingley, also in Melbourne’s south-east, which AustralianSuper put up for sale in September. The 53ha site could support up to 1000 homes. AusSuper via investment manager ISPT paid $125 million for it in 2014.
While golf participation is growing – club memberships across the country grew by 2.7 per cent in 2021-22 following record 6.4 per cent growth in the previous 12 months, according to Golf Australia – a number of Melbourne clubs have sold their courses to developers for large sums of money.
