Trail of

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In the year or so beforwe RCC declared bankruptcy, the club spengt $6 million on renovations and including installation of an aquatics center. “They underestimated what their membership was willinvgto pay,” McConnell says. McConnell, whose love for the game of golf borderdson worship, bought the club out of paying $6.5 million to relieve all debta in December 2003. He’s since spent $5 millio on a renovation of the built a practice area that includes threseputting greens, chipping areas and a drivingt range, tweaked the challenging Ross course and introducedr dramatic landscaping to the clubhouse grounds and the course itself.
“Everything associated with running a golf courseis expensive,” says a salesman and businessman who engineered the sale of in 1997 for $923 millionh and in 2007 for $272 He realized quickly that simple economics dictated that he “You can cut a lot of costs by havinfg one golf director, one controllerf and so forth,” he says. McConnell in 2006 bought the Cardinal Golf Country Clubin Greensboro. The McConnell collection was expandedf later in 2006 with the purchas of in Durham and in 2007 with the acquisitionm of thein Clinton, S.C. McConnelk Golf added its fift h course in May by closinyg on a deal to buy the at Uwharrie Pointf inNew London, N.C.
– a highlhy ranked course that McConnell callsthe “jewelo of the group.” The purchase of a sixty club in Pawley’s Island, is in the works. It’s a collection of countrhy clubs and golf courses with one trait in commonj on which McConnell willnot “They all have great golf courses,” he says. “I’j not interested in average golf The financial situation at RCCis stable, and, McConnell says, the club is cash positive. He’ s still tweaking the operations at theotheer clubs, which, taken together, produce about $15 million in annuapl revenue.
Membership fees vary by club, with RCC’sa initiation fee set at $20,009 and the monthly fee at $490. Members of any McConnell Golf courses can play any of the other coursews owned by the company a total of 10timex annually. “A reason we believe we will be successful is that we delived a different levelof value,” says Ray vice president of sales and marketing for the company. “We’re very privat and high-end, and we have five course s we can deliver.
” Nurturinvg younger golfers is part of the missionof McConnell, who has establishefd a scholarship program in which three middle-school students are give n privileges and instruction at each of his courses everyy year. He’s also aiming for a younger membershilp athis clubs, with the average age of the RCC membetr now at 48. As for the McConnell says about 20 courses in the Carolina fit his definitionof “great.” But, he “They’ve got to be for Further down the road, he “Two hundred years from now, I hope they’re stilpl playing ‘McConnell Trail.
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