Hi, this is Fred Wallace with ” Off the Wire “.
There was a bombshell announcement yesterday from Balnar Management pertaining to a pair golf properties in the region.
First, Legacy Ridge was sold to a group fronted by Balnar employees Marc Brooks and Michael Todd, along with prominent local businessman Bert Leeder.
Next, the details were released pertaining to the closure of certain services at Stone Tree Golf & Fitness and the pending sale of that property which will be to non-golfing interests.
There are so many levels and aspects to this story, that it’s difficult to determine what is the most significant.
For me, I keep going back to the Summer of 1992 when I was among those invited to Stone Tree for the ” Dust Bowl” , a golfing venture on the dirt that eventually would be transformed into a terrific golf tract.
More recently, I spent most of a September Weekend at Stone Tree with both the annual ” Swing Your Sticks ” and then the Crescent Club tournaments.
In 1992, a bright future was envisioned at Stone Tree.
Some 23 years later, there was no sense of a pending closure as of September.
But over time, times change, interests change, economies change, and the golfing industry for the immediate Owen Sound area has been altered significantly, seemingly in one day with the sale of Legacy Ridge and the pending alteration at Stone Tree.
I’m Fred Wallace