Investors Plan to Reopen Big Sugar Golf Club
by March 30, 2015 12:00 am 750 views
Remember our story last September about the struggling Big Sugar Golf Club being overgrown, unkempt and on the market for $1.5 million?
New life, it appears, is on the horizon.
Two local investors named Jeff Arnold and Steve Stobaugh have agreed to lease and operate the Pea Ridge property for three years with an option to buy at the end of the term.
Tim Salmonsen, commercial director of Keller Williams Market Pro Realty in Bentonville, has been actively marketing the property for the owner, Dr. Larry Johnson, a retired anesthesiologist living in Jonesboro.
A quick recap: Johnson bought the property — that includes 187 acres, the 1,200-SF clubhouse, equipment barn and all related equipment — at auction on Nov. 10, 2011, for $660,000, and the course re-opened March 3, 2012.
The very day he bought it, Johnson struck a deal in the Big Sugar parking lot to lease the golf course — also to a local investor group — that also made a bid at the auction.
When their offer to buy the property outright from Johnson was declined in late 2013, the investors opted out of the leasing agreement, and the golf course eventually ceased operations in February 2014 — the second time it had closed since 2010.
The 7,201-yard layout, noted for its scenic terrain and sharp elevation changes, was designed by Jerry Slack and opened in May 2002. It was supposed to be the centerpiece of a residential golf community.
To date, however, only 20 houses have been built at Big Sugar. There are 102 vacant lots.
The golf course is still several months from opening. When Whispers visited Big Sugar last fall, the property had, essentially, returned to the earth, with weeds and vegetation making the land barely recognizable as anything resembling a golf course.
Arnold says the driving range and clubhouse area have already been cleaned up and the greens have been scalped and re-seeded. He says he has contracted with the Pea Ridge Fire Department to help burn off and mow the remaining wild grass and get the course in playable shape, which he expects to happen by June.