- Almost everything that is not attached to the land of The Sanctuary golf course will be auctioned by Kiko.
- Sanctuary owner Bill Lemmon stood by a statement released a month ago.
- With six weeks left for the course, the parking lot is jam packed on Sunday.
A co-owner of The Sanctuary Golf Club has responded to the uproar over the impending closure of the Plain Township golf course.
“We understand the concern and the anger,” said Bill Lemmon. “If I were a golfer, I’d be sad too, I guess.”
It’s been a month since Lemmon and Sanctuary co-owner Bob DeHoff announced to a small circle, including officials from North Canton and Plain Township, that the golf course would close permanently. Lemmon and DeHoff soon issued a statement saying that the last day would be October 15.
Shock waves among golfers included requests to reconsider.
The closing date of October 15 holds.
An auction of Sanctuary golf supplies and equipment has been contracted by the Kiko agency for late November. Lemmon said this would include mowing machinery, clubhouse supplies, patio furniture and more, but not golf carts, that are rented.
In an Aug. 1 statement explaining the closing, Lemmon said, “The economics of running a golf course have changed dramatically over the past few years. Although we’ve tried our best to do this, it can’t go on anymore.”
In an interview Wednesday, Lemmon stood by the statement and added, “We’ve been losing money for 21 years.”
Across the board, area golf course operators say the national economic downturn of 2008 led to tough years. Family-owned courses in Stark County are starting to ask themselves if the end is near.
The game has grown in 2020, when people are looking for activities amid the COVID-19 shutdown. Reviews of courses in the area suggest that business remains strong until the summer of 2023.
A midday drive through the Sanctuary last Sunday revealed a parking lot packed to capacity, with dozens of golfers visible in the holes within sight of Applegrove Street.
“It’s been a beautiful year,” Lemmon said.
He said courses like his, which pay the entire management/worker group, are different from family-owned operations.
“If you have a family and you can get people to help you, you can make money,” Lemmon said. “But if you’re hiring everyone … people aren’t cheap. That affects the bottom line.”
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Lemmon and DeHoff have transformed a golf course into something else.
In 2002, First Christian Church funded a project to purchase the 105-acre Edgewood Golf Course on North Market Avenue. Lemmon and DeHoff did the selling.
First Christian moved from its home on the eastern edge of Malone University to the Edgewood property, building over the original nine holes and keeping the nine holes open for a while. The first Christian could not continue to pay the debt and reorganized its situation.
“The church is doing really well now,” Lemmon said.
The land around the church is mostly houses now.
Just as the First Christian project was about to begin, the Bob-O-Link golf course, two miles away, was closed by the new owners, Lemmon and DeHoff.
The original 18 holes of Bob-O-Link on the south side of Applegrove are closed and now covered by houses.
The newer nine at Bob-O-Link, on the north side of Applegrove, was renovated while nine new holes were built. Lemmon gave the name “Sanctuary” to the cobbled-together 18-hole course that opened in 2004.
The link from Plain Township to North Canton is included in the housing built on the original 18-hole Bob-O-Link. This can happen in Sanctuary, which is in Plain Township in the city limits of North Canton.
Lemmon could not fully confirm a widespread belief that the Sanctuary would be inhabited. He explained that it would happen.
“We’ve got a lot of different things to look at,” Lemmon said, “but look and see what’s around it.”
It is surrounded by houses, some of which have been there for a long time. The parents of North Canton icon Dick Snyder lived in the neighborhood decades ago when Dick played for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Lemmon and DeHoff consider Sanctuary’s front nine “thriving.”
“Most of the back nine is undevelopable because of high water tables, wetlands and flood issues,” Lemmon said. “We’ve had preliminary discussions about what that open space might be.
“We haven’t gotten to the point of putting anything on the developable side. The east side of the back nine will be open space forever. It can get more uses than it being a golf course. What’s there is there are walking paths.”
He was talking about golf-cart lanes.
Sanctuary follows the path taken by a rash of closed or closing golf courses, including Seven Hills and Sanctuary this year, Skyland Pines in 2021, and Tam O’Shanter in 2018.
Golf course insider Steve DiPietro, who sells Skyland Pines, owns Prestwick on the Green, and manages Arrowhead in North Canton, was asked if he thought Sanctuary would be a home.
“I can imagine,” he said. “Bob DeHoff and Bill Lemmon are successful developers. The best use is not necessarily a golf course. There is a housing crunch. Many of these golf courses are in municipal areas where they need housing. .”
In an interview a few months before Sanctuary announced it would close, North Canton City administrator Patrick DeOrio talked about the housing issue.
“There is a huge demand from people who want to live in North Canton,” he said. “We don’t have enough housing to accommodate the demand.”
DeOrio said city planners are talking about housing issues that are likely to arise in the next 50 years.
DeHoff foreshadowed Sanctuary’s closing in an interview in April.
“The golf course business is a tough business … and I’m a golfer,” he said. “We’re real estate developers. We don’t have specific golf course plans, but as someone said, developers don’t own golf courses, they own the land.”
Steve can be reached at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP