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footballguy51 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 09, 2021 3:04 pm I got a student membership there over a summer during grad school and would go play 9 holes 3-4 times a week in the afternoons. My membership was less than $100 for 3 months work of golfing almost constantly. I actually got to a point where I posted my best 18-hole score of an 88. Unfortunately, their mistake was constantly increasing the price. It got to where I could go to a nicer course in town for about $10 more. They fell into the weird spot of being more expensive than a cheap course but not a super nice course to justify the cost.
Bingo. That (along with general decline in golf) was why it lost so much playership. I think my year long membership as a student ran about $175. As I said the single greatest perk of my time as a student. I didn't play it much after graduating because A) I had probably already put about 500 rounds there in my 4 years, and B) the prices just got way too high for the type of course it was competing against.
And it largely got to that point due to piss poor management from the University above the budgets got pinched and pinched to the point where they couldn't properly maintain the course. They were forced to raise rates in a vain effort to get the revenues up.
Due to the way golf playership has declined nationwide, I do not know if the course was ever going to be "profitable" but like many things a University can offer its students and the community it serves, it does not HAVE to be. The costs to run the course were well within reason for the benefit to the students and community. As for it being a "money pit" that's not exactly accurate, unless you're accusing BGSU of completely cooking the books (which is certainly within the realm of possibility). The course in the early '00 (Golf's heyday) was bringing in north of $700k in revenue. That number dipped down to around $400k in its waning years. However, due to that decline in revenue they continually cut the budgets to the point that it wasn't costing that much more. It was still getting under $100k of general fund money every year compared to north of $200k for the ice arena (which brings in $1.1m in revenue). Like everything we talk about with BGSU though, the goal of Creason should have never been to turn a profit. It should have been to provide a great perk for students and the community that BGSU serves, and to do so at a reasonable expense to the university. At its worst, I believe it was doing that.
The people who were tasked with running Creason were not given the proper budget to actually run it as a decent course. That layout was NEVER going to compete with Stone Ridge, but if given a decent operating budget it was a vastly superior course to Fallen Timbers or Tanglewood. Due to the way it was mismanaged the course rates were jacked up to near double or triple what those places cost, however, and that was its undoing. I have it on decent authority that the last course superintendent was actually wanting to take the course completely on his own...he was convinced it could still be a viable business on its own if not for the constant cuts.
I also believe that the land it sits on was gifted to the university with the clause that it could ONLY be used for a golf course, so it likely will never be repurposed at all.
