Scottsdale management company guides HOA in course turnaround
An amazing resurrection will culiminate in November when the Trilogy La Quinta golf club, site of the televised “Skins Game” of the early 2000s, reopens almost three years after it was abandoned.
When the former Coral Mountain Golf Club closed in 2021 following a succession of owners, and the property thrown into bankruptcy, the 1,200 homeowners in the Trilogy La Quinta community in La Quinta, Calif., were left with an eyesore.
Looking out their windows they saw dead fairways, tee boxes and greens with knee-high weeds poking through brown turf; a broken irrigation system; a shuttered clubhouse; and six irrigation ponds that became fetid mosquito breeding grounds.
That was the status quo until this January when after 20 meetings, the local homeowners association won overwhelming approval from its membership to buy the course, its clubhouse and restaurant. The cost of the purchase was $6.17 million, plus an undisclosed additional amount for equipment and irrigation upgrades, Golfweek reported at the time.
“It’s just in extremely rough shape, barely looks like a golf course,” HOA President Mark Reider told Golfweek.
Enter BlueStar Golf & Resort, a Scottsdale golf management company, which was hired by the HOA to guide it through the process of rehabilitating the golf course.
The challenge was steep. The course hadn’t been watered since 2021 when the previous owner closed the course. It had been mowed only once by the HOA at the urging of frustrated homeowners. The irrigation ponds and other low-lying areas of the course had grown so stagnant that the county brought in fish to eat mosquito larvae.
What could have taken a year or more is being accomplished in a matter of months. BlueStar – which had managed the course when it was originally built by the developer, Shea Homes, in 2002 – won the job of overseeing the restoration.
Job one was the hiring of a superintendent. The job fell to Ernesto Alvarez, who had served as assistant superintendent before moving on before the Coral Mountain course closed. Simultaneous to his hiring, BlueStar ordered new pumps and irrigation-control equipment and repaired thousands of sprinkler heads. It eventually bought the mowers and other maintenance equipment the HOA will need to maintain the course, said Matt Anzalone, BlueStar VP of golf and club operations.
In early spring, a local contractor with an open couple of months was a fortuitous find. Under the supervision of Gary Brawley, a protégé of the course’s architect, Gary Panks, crews shaved off two inches of dead Bermuda from all 18 greens, plus two practice greens, and replaced it with drought-tolerant mini verde Bermuda. Bunkers were relined and reshaped with lowered nose to make them more playable.
With watering and minimal herbicide spraying, the 419 Bermuda fairways and tee boxes across the 220-acre golf course returned to life, squeezing out most of the weeds.
“The course has great bones. You can see all the characteristics that made it one of the best in the region,” said Reider of the HOA board.
At the same time as the course work, BlueStar set about gutting the interior of the clubhouse. What had been an ad hoc snack bar was replaced by a full-service restaurant and pro shop. The restaurant, designed in the Mid-Century Modern style for which the Coachella Valley is known, has been renamed “Kitchen Ten Eleven” The name connotes a new beginning and “evokes what we are attempting to create – a contemporary, California-inspired restaurant,” the HOA recently announced on its website.
“It’s still a very playable, enjoyable course, and [we’re] looking forward to having both people in our community being able to play here, as well as people from the surrounding areas or folks that are coming in from out of town on a golf trip,” Reider said.
As an added feature for players, when Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta re-opens in November, the club will make the original “Skins tees” available for play, allowing players to experience the course the way Tiger Woods, Fred Couples, and Phil Mickelson did back in its heyday, BlueStar said in a news release.
BlueStar’s portfolio spans 19 clubs in California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.
Dan Vukelich is the online editor at Alabama Golf News. Reach him at dan@alabamagolfnews.com
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Featured before and after images courtesy of BlueStar Golf & Resort
