Pebble Creek Golf Club in Tampa, Florida, will close in July after being at the center of a residential community for more than 50 years.
The club’s owner, Bill Place of Ace Golf, plans to convert the course northeast of Busch Gardens into a residential development, the Tampa Bay Times and other outlets reported.
Place had applied for the course to receive a brownfield designation, meaning he would have received funding to help clean chemical contamination on the course. Several neighbors objected, and Hillsborough County rejected his petition.
Place said in his petition that the course can no longer continue to operate at a loss. Despite an increase in rounds played in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the club has not been profitable since 2018. The club is down to 73 members from a high of 300 in the 1990s, the Times reported, with only 20 of those members coming from the 1,300 neighboring Pebble Creek homeowners.
After years of course closures around the country, the rate of closures slowed in 2020 as more people headed out to play golf all across the United States. But several courses still have closed this year despite the recent spike in play, as those layouts typically have suffered operating losses for years as participation declined after the Great Recession around 2008.
