Sunday, March 18, 2012

NORTH FORT MYERS GOLF COURSE SOLD LOCHMOOR COUNTRY CLUB

Written by  Dick Hogan   News Press  visit;  http://www.news-press.com/

North Fort Myers golf course site is sold

Lochmoor Country Club property goes for just $3 million.

Paradise Preserve in North Fort Myers on Friday for $3 million — a fraction of its $94 million foreclosure in 2009.

Brandenburg Properties bought the 18 parcels comprising the roughly 400-acre former Lochmoor Country Club from Minneapolis-based Mic-Monte LLC, according to Lee County Clerk of Court records.

Mic-Monte is owned by Minneapolis-based Marshall Investments Corp., which loaned developer Paradise Preserve LLC $79 million in 2005 for the ambitious redevelopment of the golf course and marina along Orange Grove Boulevard.

But the project was never built although the developer shut down the golf course, which became overgrown with brush to the dismay of neighbors.

Starting Friday, Schooner Bay Realty took over management of the community’s marina, which is operating, said Tad Yeatter, the broker of Schooner Bay Realty, who represented Brandenburg in the sale.

Brandenburg has no immediate development plans for the site, he said.

According to the company’s website, it has built golf courses and has “special expertise in creating, designing, entitling and developing golf course projects,” working with top golf course architects, including Tom Fazio and Arnold Palmer.

Joan Huerth, who lives near Paradise Preserve on Seafan Circle, said she’d like to see the golf course restored.
As Lochmoor, she said, “It was a great little course. They served breakfast, they had fish fries. I’d like to see that again.”
As it is now, the property isn’t a good neighbor, she said. “People hear coyotes howling there all the time and a rattlesnake nailed a dog last year.”