Scott Radley: With Hamilton’s golf courses full they must be turning a huge profit. Not exactly
If you've tried to get a tee time at a local golf course this summer, chances are you've either called early or left disappointed. A cart offering free beer at a Florida Georgia Line concert would draw less of a line these days.
As Spectator golf columnist Garry McKay pointed out the other day, courses from Flamborough all the way down through the Niagara Peninsula are booked from dawn until dusk." That includes Hamilton's three municipal courses.
It's been packed since we've started," says Steve Sevor, the city's manager of sport services. Tee sheets are full."
This is great news. Having King's Forest and the two courses at Chedoke Municipal - Martin and Beddoe - jammed must be translating into sizeable profits for the municipal courses, right?
Hold that thought for a moment as we take a step or two back and look at the past few years.
In 2017, King's Forest lost $239,171. However, a significant uptick in rounds played the next season (22,961 to 24,314) caused that summer's loss to drop to $134,964. And with another increase in rounds played last summer (26,396), the loss came in at $145,448.
Wait a second, some of you eagle-eyed accountants are saying. How could an increase in rounds one year cause the finances to improve but another increase cause them to get worse the following year? Great question.
The answer seems to lie, in part, in the popularity of the course. Back in 2010, it became the only municipal course ever to make the SCOREGolf list of top 100 courses in the country. In recent years, membership numbers have risen.
If members - who have paid their flat fee up front - play a lot, there aren't as many openings for others to come and pay for individual rounds. In other words, more members guarantee revenue in the event of a slow summer, but they also can get in the way of growth when things are humming.
As for Chedoke, the two courses there lost $160,979 in 2017, $137,843 in 2018 and $195,570 last season even as rounds played went up every year from 29,499 to 30,328 to 39,238. How did the place gain nearly 10,000 additional rounds but lose an additional $35,000 over that time? Capital expenses and upkeep, mainly.
As Sevor says, this year has been great. As good as it gets. Once people were allowed out of self-quarantine, they flooded the courses and haven't let up. As a result, the city has projected a $50,000 profit for King's Forest this summer. And after initially budgeting for a loss at Chedoke, he now thinks it could break even or maybe even do a little better than that.
This is positive for obvious reasons. Then again, if the municipal courses can only eke out a tiny profit in a perfect-storm outlier of a summer when everything is aligned for them to do well, is there any real possibility of financial success in normal times?
That's the question we've been trying to solve for the past number of years," Sevor says.
It might. There's a chance that this summer has whetted the appetite of thousands of city golfers who will return in 2021. Maybe that tiny sliver of a profit becomes bigger. Then that cash can be poured back into capital improvements and lure even more players. Without having to pay for the extra COVID-19 cleaning protocols that add up, perhaps the numbers could go even higher.
On the other hand, things could just as easily return to some kind of normal next year when other entertainment options are once again available - assuming they are by then - and the courses could go back to being tax absorbers rather than revenue generators.
How do we forecast this for next year?" Sevor says. That's the question for all of us."
He's absolutely right, of course. But this uncertainty also keeps another nagging question alive. One that's been raised at council recently and almost certainly will pop up again now that Brantford has announced it's selling its Arrowdale Municipal Course so affordable housing units can be built on part of it.
Should the city be in the golf course business if the facilities are losing money? Especially now that Hamilton is facing a massive operating deficit that at one time was projected to be as high as $120 million. Which, by law, the city must pay off.
If they start losing money again, should the city consider closing some or all its courses and simply turning them into park land? Should it think about selling to a private golf operator? Investing in them and hoping to draw bigger numbers of players? Eating the losses and chalking it up to the cost of doing business? Increasing green fees, which some would say would defeat the purpose of having municipal courses in the first place?
Or maybe selling one or two of the courses to a developer (as has been suggested here before as a last-ditch option in the event of a financial emergency) or to create other housing models as Brantford has done? Assuming the Niagara Escarpment Commission would allow it.
Every one of these ideas has been raised in different corners. And they will be again, you can be sure. Particularly here in a town that's staring at some daunting expenses while not exactly being flush with cash.
Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com