photo by: Photo provided by Brian Hamric
Early autumn scenes at the Moundsville Country Club are hoped to be the site of expanded public and community events under new leadership in the coming years.
MOUNDSVILLE — A recent transition of leadership at the Moundsville Country Club has left the new board of directors with a handful of issues to sort through, but dreams of a bright future if they can sort through them.
In 2019, the West Virginia Regional Economic Development Partnership made an $8.025 million offer to purchase the property, and its 163 acres of land just south of Moundsville, with a closing date of Dec. 31, 2021. This kicked off an initiative for club officials to gather the club’s disparate shareholders — the nearly 800 shares of whom had been spread far and wide since first being minted in 1940 — to come to a decision among those who hold the shares still available today.
However, a community effort to fight the sale of the property sprung up, leading to the relatively recent transfer of power on the country club’s board of directors. Dennis Hanley, one of the new directors, said the final member of the previous board resigned last week, and that the shift in leadership occurred over the last three months.
The new board of directors, Hanley said, consists of president Roger Louis, vice-president Jack Zukoff, treasurer Frank Bruner, Wanda DeTemple, Patti Maroney, Ed Zwolensky, Dennis Hendershot, George Jones and himself.
Hanley said the old board had voted to sell the club, with a provision that it be allowed to continue to operate for another two years, with a $1 million loan from RED to keep it solvent in the meantime.
“The board, as it stood (in 2019), felt that the club did not have a viable financial future moving forward,” Hanley said. “The board voted on selling the club, and the buyer at the time, as it is still now, was RED. … They negotiated a letter of intent that was signed by (then-president) Dave Buzzard to sell the club for $8 million.
“The letter of intent included an intention to sell, as well as a $1 million loan to the club to allow it to operate for another two years. As it stands right now, there’s only about $80,000 left of that million.”
Hanley speculated that the land was eyed for development with an eye on the proposed ethane cracker plant at Dilles Bottom, in addition to other development opportunities across the region.
The public’s concerns, he said, were both to fight the loss of the country club, and to push back against possible industrial development on the site if sold.
“Once concerned citizens got together on Facebook, it was pretty clear that there was an outpouring from the community to save the property, and some of the most vocal people were the Washington Lands people,” Hanley said in an interview Thursday. “… They knew that their property values would (fall) if there was a chemical plant right across W.Va. 2, and besides, it wouldn’t be a great place to live anymore, not to mention that there’s Washington Lands Elementary School.”
Now, the country club remains on the hook for the $1 million loan from RED, with what Hanley said is a March 15 deadline, though RED may choose to extend the deadline further under the circumstances. Representatives from the Regional Economic Development Partnership could not be reached for comment.
“The problem that we’re having is that, today, we’re saddled with a million dollar debt to RED. … We have $85,000 left of that million, and we have to pay that million back, if RED calls the note. If they call the note in 30 days, we can’t pay it, so we go bankrupt, they foreclose,” he said.
“… What RED has signaled to us is that they are willing to structure the payback so that we’re only paying a small interest on the million dollars for five years, and then … we’ve got to pay whatever is left off,” Hanley added. “I know we may or may not make it. However, the community support has been unbelievable.”
If RED chooses to restructure the loan, Hanley said, RED retains the right of first refusal on the property if the country club can’t stay afloat further down the line.
Zukoff later added that he’s confident that the new leadership will be able to rally the community and emerge successful in their venture, even if the circumstances leading to their current situation were less than ideal.
“I think we’ll be able to. We’re trying to get some finances from different places, we’re going to try to get some grant money,” he said. “There’s money out there to be had, so we’ll go with that. … We’ve got some concerns about it, but we’re just going to take it day by day, hopefully work a deal out with them, come up with some extra money, and … we’ll go back to where we were.
“It should have never come to this point, but it did, and it’s what we’ve got to deal with.”
Hanley believes “there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” if their financial obligations can be fulfilled. The support of the community has been overwhelming already, he said, and the Facebook group coordinating their efforts has attracted over 850 members.
Internally, Hanley said the new leadership intends to be transparent and open in their business dealings, opening meetings to the public. Zukoff compared their hopes for future meetings as being similar to municipal council meetings, where the public can sign up to speak and air concerns.
“Every board meeting will be an open meeting, and anyone can attend,” Hanley said. “… The board meetings were never open. … Secondly, we have every intention of printing the minutes from every meeting and putting them on the website. We also plan on putting up quarterly financial statements.
Looking ahead, Hanley said he hopes the country club can become a public recreation area in the vein of St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Scotland, which is regularly opened to the public for casual recreation, rather than remaining a gated clubhouse for the wealthy. He pointed to society’s trend away from the exclusive social clubs of the past as evidence that the club’s future lay in embracing the community, rather than becoming an enclave within it.
“I’m 65 years old, but that’s all done — young people aren’t joining that stuff. When you say ‘country club’ it gives people this air of, ‘Why would I want to save that? It’s a bunch of old white guys playing golf.’ Our vision is to turn this into a Marshall County recreational center — we want to apply for grants for a skateboard park, a dog park, we’d like to open the course up.
“… We need the public’s support to be able to fund our vision,” he continued. “… The main thing is, it’s public. If you play golf, come down and support us. … We are open, we had 65 people down there playing (early in the week). We will plan, once the weather breaks, to have a community party, put some food trucks out in the parking lot, to thank everybody for getting us to where we are now.”
Zukoff agreed, saying that the new community-focused direction was the way to go. Both men were excited at the prospect of developing further, community-based uses for the property, such as a wedding venue and adding a new restaurant to the premises.
“The community’s really rallying around us. They’re the ones who really came through. If we don’t have the community behind us, then, we might have just said, ‘That’s the way it is.’
“… Hopefully in the near future, we’ll have somebody in the upstairs restaurant, it’ll be open to the community. Hopefully they’ll come and support the restaurant, and we’ll try to make it where we can rent out (the hall area) for different venues, weddings, showers. It’ll help the community and be a place for people to go, and maybe down the road, get some remodeling in here and there.”
The community Facebook group can be found under the name Save MCC 1009.