Las Vegas greens fees are nation's second highest

Peggy Hart is a true visionary.

Shortly after her retirement to Las Vegas several years ago, the former Phoenix resident and avid golfer was driving down Bonanza Road one afternoon when she spotted the dilapidated Nature Park and thought, "What a waste; that would be a good place to put a golf course."

Not too long after Hart had that revelation, the Las Vegas City Council announced its intention to build a public golf course on the same site. Hart sprang into action and began writing letters to the city council.

"I proposed that they put in just an executive course because they only have 98 acres there," Hart said. "Instead, they put this big, expensive course there plus the driving range. It's wonderful, but we don't need another country club.

"We've got all the high-end courses that we can possibly digest."

What the Valley needs, Hart and other local golfers insist, are more affordable public-access courses and fewer public "country clubs."

In the past decade, no fewer than a dozen public courses have sprung from the Southern Nevada desert, but not one is what Hart would classify as affordable. Each one, seemingly in an attempt to outdo the competition, is more expensive to build and, as a result, costs more to play.

For every Craig Ranch or Desert Rose golf course that charges below $40 for a round of golf, there are a growing number of courses that are charging $100 or more per round during peak playing times.

Nevada ranks second in the country in highest average greens fees at $84. Only Hawaii is more expensive, by a dollar.

Even during the heat of the summer, when greens fees are reduced in an attempt to generate more play during the year's slowest period, it would cost an average of $68 to play 18 holes in the morning this week at one of the Valley's 25 public courses (see accompanying chart).

That $68 figure does not take into account many terrific mid-day or "twilight" rates offered by most local courses during the summer. But those discounts still were not enough to impress one national golf publication.

Golf Digest magazine recently ranked Las Vegas 264th out of 309 major U.S. cities based on access to quality, affordable public and municipal golf.

But despite golfers' protestations to the contrary, the exorbitant greens fees are not simply the result of course operators trying to gouge the locals and attract free-spending tourists.

Stanton Abrams, president of the Boston-based Senior Tour Players, Inc., which built and operates The Badlands Golf Club at Peccole Ranch, said the steep greens fees merely are the result of doing business in Las Vegas.

Escalating water rights and staggering construction costs to blast away the hard caliche with dynamite in order to install irrigation systems are only two of the expenses unique to Las Vegas, he said.

"I would say, based on other courses that we have done, it costs easily twice as much to build a golf course in Las Vegas than it would, say, back East," Abrams said.

"Once you get the costs up to, say, $10 million, the rule of thumb is you would have to get about $100 greens fees. If it's a $5 million golf course, you can get by on $50 greens fees."

That is not the case in other cities where Senior Tour Players has developed courses. Abrams said it would be possible to build a no-frills golf course in Florida, for example, for about $2-$3 million because land is cheap and fertile and water is plentiful.

On the other hand, Abrams said, the same course in Las Vegas could not be done for much less than $7 million.

"It's an expensive proposition, building a golf course these days," Abrams said of Las Vegas.

"We could charge ($25 or $30) if we had built it years and years ago, but not any longer. The thing is that every new course that gets built, the costs are not getting cheaper, so you pretty much have to charge more money."

That may be fine for private ventures such as new housing developments. But it doesn't explain to North Las Vegas resident Calvin Banks why local government can't build more municipal courses.

Banks is leading a growing group of North Las Vegas golfers who are lobbying their city council to at least examine the matter. North Las Vegas has only one public course, a par-3 layout off Cheyenne Road.

"We've simply been asking the city council to look into a program offered by the (United States Golf Association) which has a 10-year, $50 million planning program that provides assistance to communities to build affordable golf courses," Banks said.

"What we're trying to do is get the city council to direct their attention to it ... but so far we haven't had any luck."

Banks said the council doesn't seemed tuned in to what's available.

"They just say, 'We don't have any land, we don't have any money.' Well, we're not asking for any money; we're asking them to set up a group that could, officially, on the city's behalf, go to the USGA and ask for planning assistance money," Banks said.

"The USGA isn't going to build courses, but there are many sources of funds to build recreational facilities -- including the federal government with their recreational land policies."

Like Hart, Banks moved to the Valley several years ago only to find that affordable golf is about as rare as a summer rainstorm.

"The vast majority of golfers can't break 90. They ought to be able to play golf two or three times a week for $15 or $20, and not wait until 3 o'clock in the afternoon in Las Vegas when it's the heat of the day to get a decent price," Banks said.

"You cannot go out on the $195 Desert Inn golf course with a $1.95 game. The average golfer ought to be able to play golf three times a week and not wreck a $100 bill. Since I've been here, it's been an absolute ordeal trying to find some place (affordable) to play."

Hart, who has joined Banks' attempt to move the North Las Vegas city council into action, agreed.

"I've been golfing for 17 years and I took an early retirement and moved here, expecting to play a lot of golf, and got a big surprise," she said.

"We don't have enough golf courses for the golfing capita. We have a lot of retired people here, I'm sure, that would play more golf if it was reasonable."

Longtime residents have seen greens fees double and triple over the past decade. But there may be some hope if the current spurt of new course openings continues, Abrams said.

"To me, if another eight or 10 new courses were to open, I think there would have to be very competitive (pricing)," Abrams said.

"Every place gets to a saturation point. Although I haven't done any research on it, I think there certainly is a point ... where fees would certainly level off. But I don't know if they would come down.

"Las Vegas is blessed with a lot of great courses that are open to the public. But they are expensive and it's just the cost of doing business out there."

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