Town happy with success of Par 3 Clubhouse, restaurant | www.palmbeachdailynews.com

Tons of people are using the clubhouse and golf facilities the town of Palm Beach just improved at their Par 3 golf course. The Clubhouse opened in the middle of January and is exceeding financial expectations. At times, the 71 parking spaces are overwhelmed. Of course, this is a different market than the people that go to our Casino building and patronize those businesses. And different than our golf course in view from this property across the Lake Worth lagoon. But it is worthy of note that the two properties are less than a mile apart and share a similar view of the ocean. One has a beach and no golf; the other has golf and no beach. Our golf course is close too. You can see the new Palm Beach Par 3 Clubhouse from the deck of ours.

For Lake Worth's part, it has a second floor restaurant space at the beach that is still looking to find a tenant. It is being used in an ad hoc way as office space for Casino building personnel. I believe that the restaurant at the Palm Beach facility is also on the second floor. Look at this video highlighting the golf course's features. This simple production is something that the city of Lake Worth could have done for the beach complex as well as its golf course.



Here is a snippet from the article. Click title for link.

Since its opening on Jan. 17 through March 31, the total golf course revenue was $510,572, up 53 percent compared to the same period last year, town officials said. In the same period, golf rounds increased from about 8,000 to 10,000, or 25 percent, over the previous year.

“We knew we would be successful, but we didn’t know we would be this successful so quickly,” said Recreation Director Jay Boodheshwar. “It’s very nice to see these kind of numbers beyond what we had imagined. It’s a great problem to have.”

Merchandise sales increased a whopping 170 percent, from $19,951 to $53,960, during the two-and-a-half months.

That $500,000 is reminiscent of the figure that Lake Worth elected not to pay itself back in this budget year. I don't know what would have changed to allow the city to begin recouping the $6 million and change it used to build the new Casino building in this coming year's budget. We were promised that money would be paid back and our water utility made whole again.

It is just striking to me that two municipal projects within such a short distance from one another would have such different records of financial performance. We have heard it said that the business plan for the beach was flawed. It's time to fix that.