2014–2017 · Golf course · Article 14 of 20
Three Seasons Under New Ownership
The new owners improved the greens and renovated the clubhouse, but the rounds did not come. By 2017 the course was for sale again.
The 2014 sale came with real investment. By the accounts in the trade press, work started on the greens that summer and moved on to the tees and the clubhouse. The membership drive began. Brierwood was, for a time, a course on the way up.
It was not enough. Looking back in 2017, Mr. Blum told The Sun News that the course simply was not generating enough rounds to be profitable. Membership at the end stood at about 70, roughly where it had been at the time of the sale.
The owners had tried to broaden the business. Over the three years they floated ideas for other uses on the property, including an RV park and a hotel, and later said those ideas found no positive response from the surrounding community or from local governments. Mr. Blum's view, as he put it in 2017, was that very few golf courses survive on golf alone and that something else is needed alongside the course.
The last attempt was a sale. The owners listed the course for $1.5 million and kept it on the market for about six months. They reported no credible offers.
The decision followed. In May 2017, in the year the course was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, the owners announced that Brierwood Golf Club would close at the beginning of June. Mr. Blum did not rule out reopening it one day in an altered form, a remark that would prove prophetic.