A complete turnaround

Tim Kurty and Stan Kogut have been in the golf business a long time. Thinking about the future and retirement, they wanted an insurance policy to benefit them later in life. So they bought a semi-private golf course that needed a lot of work – Mill Valley Golf Links in Belchertown, Mass. After five years, the much-improved nine-hole course has been expanded to 18, and membership has increased from 175 to 350.

Tim Kurty and Stan Kogut purchased the nine-hole Mill Valley Golf Links and expanded it to 18 holes.

“We think we will be at 500 next year,” Kurty says.

In 1999, Kurty was the treasurer of Ludlow (Mass.) Country Club and had been in that position for 18 years. Kogut is the superintendent at Ludlow and has been there for 27 years, 20 of them in a row.

“I was giving up being the treasurer there, and this came up,” Kurty says about purchasing Mill Valley. “The course for sale was a town over. So we looked at it, then bought it.

“The course was in bad shape,” he adds. “It had no irrigation system, except for a primitive one on the greens and tees. Every year, the fairways turned yellow because of the lack of water.”

Kogut agrees with Kurty, saying the course had a really poor and antiquated irrigation system.

“There are well points all over the place, but every well hole we drilled was a bust,” he says. “The course didn’t have enough water. It just had a brook.”

Kurty, Kogut and another business partner purchased the 135-acre course, a three-family house, a small clubhouse and a maintenance barn for $810,000.
“We operated the course as it was for one year, then we went back to the bank to finance an irrigation system,” Kurty says. The new system was put in, and we lengthened four holes. We brought in tons of loam, redid the bunkers – it was a total overhaul.

“But the nine-hole course didn’t cut it,” he adds. “We had to charge less, and it was an inconvenience for those who wanted to play 18 holes. So we looked at the land available. There were 54 additional acres owned by the town. Even though the town has always been on our side, it didn’t want to sell the land to us because it wanted to add land because it was growing. However, there was another parcel, a 154-acre piece owned by the Canadian National Railroad. We bought the land from it and did a land swap with the town in which we gave the city 100 acres for the 54 we wanted to expand the golf course.”

Aside from the additional nine holes, Mill Valley's new owners completely updated the irrigation system.

Kurty and Kogut hired Armstrong Golf Architects to design seven of the additional nine holes that were added and White Construction to build them.
“We gave the firm a budget of $700,000 for the seven holes,” Kurty says. “The total to build and design the seven holes came to $760,000. In February 2004, we started to cut down some trees, and in the spring, White started to shape the course. We ended up changing some holes around so both nines finish near the clubhouse.

“We built two other holes on our own with very little clearing, and they fit in with the whole scheme of things,” he adds. “In 2004, we operated as a 11-hole course, and in the spring of 2005, we operated as an 18-hole course.”

With the new irrigation system, Kogut says water is being pumped from the brook and a pond that was built during the renovation. But that has been hindered because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency complained that too much water was being taken out of the brook.

“It never stops with the EPA,” Kogut says. “The local agencies and the state make it difficult and costly to build a golf course. I will never do it again. For example, if you miss a filing, they will fine you, and they don’t want to hear any excuses either.”

Turfwise, the blugrass fairways, which have a dark green color, on the new holes consist of existing soil. The bentgrass greens and tees are pure sand – California greens. Kogut says the greens and tees were tough to seed because it’s difficult to keep the sand-based greens wet long enough for the seed to germinate. A lot of Penncross was cut into the tees and greens, he says.

Membership has increased 100 percent at Mill Valley since Tim Kurty and Stan Kogut purchased the course.

More change will happen for Kogut, too. He is leaving the Ludlow Country Club in February because it didn’t renew his contract.

“I have been getting grief from the club ever since I purchased Mill Valley five years ago,” he says. “We’ve also had poor conditions, and there’s a new regime here.”

Kogut says it’s up in the air as to whether he will work full time at Mill Valley because superintendent Fred Swochak is doing a great job.

“We would like Fred to stay on board, but we are encouraging him to look for another job,” Kurty says.

The Mill Valley staff consists of three full-time workers and three or four part time workers. Membership to the course, which is $2 million in debt, costs $700 annually. Kurty also has instituted a season cart pass for $300.

“You can get unlimited golf and the use of a cart for $1,000 a year,” he says. GCN