At 100 years old, Southview Country Club is one of the oldest golf courses in the state.
So eyebrows were raised this past spring after whispers that the West St. Paul golf course might be sold for development and Southview would buy and move to Prestwick Golf Club in Woodbury. At the time, officials from both golf courses declined to comment.
Turns out, the whispers had some merit.
Josh Luehmann, Southview’s general manager, confirmed last week that they looked into selling the 121-acre course to a developer and purchasing Prestwick. But last month Southview members shot down the idea by voting against a resolution that would have explored it further, Luehmann said.
“We’re staying put,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The idea was not deliberate, he said, but rather came up as the course was dealing with extensive “winter kill” of poa annua, or annual bluegrass, that made some areas unplayable until June.
“We were one of many golf courses that got bit by that winter damage,” Luehmann said.
On top of that, Southview’s irrigation system is 50 years old and needs to be replaced at a cost that could exceed $1.5 million, Luehmann said.
About the same time, Southview’s board of directors learned that Prestwick may be for sale, Luehmann said.
Southview did some initial research and began talks with a real estate developer who was interested in its land, which lies just east of retail-heavy South Robert Street mostly in West St. Paul but also in Inver Grove Heights. The total market value is more than $4.9 million, according to Dakota County estimates.
Meanwhile, Washington County puts the market value on Prestwick’s 160 acres at $3.7 million.
Dave Mooty, who became owner of Prestwick in 1996, said last week that he was in talks about selling to Southview and that “the opportunity was really a really good one for both sides.”
Mooty said he is looking at putting Prestwick up for sale this winter.
“I have owned Prestwick for 23 years now, and it’s getting probably time for us to look at selling,” he said. “We spend more of our winters down in Arizona now, and if we didn’t have to worry about the restaurant that would be easier for us. So I think that’s what we’re ultimately pointing toward.”
In 2017, Prestwick opened T. Morris Pub & Grill in a revamped restaurant space. The name is an ode to legendary Scottish golfer Tom Morris.
Prestwick, formerly called Wedgewood, opened in the mid-80s. Mooty said Prestwick’s clubhouse was fully renovated about 15 years ago, and that all of the course’s holes have been renovated in recent years.
Luehmann acknowledged that selling Southview and buying Prestwick would have resulted in a loss of some of Southview’s roughly 550 members.
“There would have been some who would not have wanted to change locations for numerous reasons,” he said. “But we’re in a good position here. We’re a healthy club. We weren’t looking to make the move or we weren’t pursuing this information gathering because we’re in a bad spot. We were just looking at possibilities.”
The course is now in great condition, Luehmann said. This past weekend the course hosted the annual Tapemark pro-am golf tournament, which had been scheduled for early June but was postponed due to the winter turf damage.
“If you go around the golf course and look at those greens you would never know the extent of the damage that we had in the spring,” Luehmann said.
And much of the poa annua grass has been replaced by heartier bentgrass to prevent a repeat of this past spring, he said.
The course’s rich history is one of the big reasons members voted to stay, he said.
“There’s 100 years of Southview history here in West St. Paul,” he said. “And members have been a part of that and have enjoyed that, and they want to continue building upon that history so that we can be a 200-year-old club at one point.”
