Short-term deal reached to keep Hooper Golf Club in business
As published on page one of the May 12, 2011 edition of The Keene Sentinel, and online.
WALPOLE -- Golfers should enjoy the Hooper Golf Club while they can.
Two years from now, the course may be sold.
The board of directors of the Hooper Golf Club has been in negotiations with Walpole's selectmen to extend the club's lease on the historic, nine-hole course.
But instead of the five- or 10-year extension the club's leadership hoped to secure, the lease will continue only to the end of 2012.
"We're in a good position right now, but it's wait-and-see on the future of the golf course and that property," golf club secretary Fred Hughes said.
The selectmen -- who oversee the Hooper Trust, which owns the land -- say they may be forced to sell the land to shore up the trust's finances.
Trustee of Trust Funds Jerome S. Galloway agrees that selling the land is the best way to honor the will of George L. Hooper, who bequeathed the land to the town almost 100 years.
"From my perspective it would be better off for everybody if it were sold. We need to fulfill the fiduciary responsibility to the trust," he said.
Trustees of trust funds manage a town's various savings accounts, including trusts such as this one.
But some Walpole residents say the golf course has more than fiduciary value.
It's not only golfers who would have one fewer place to play if the links were sold, according to Marcia Galloway, co-chairman of the Walpole Conservation Commission and president of the Hooper Hill Hoppers, the town's snowmobile club.
"In my opinion it's a valuable piece of public property for the land, and I wouldn't like to see it developed," she said.
Snowmobilers ride through the property when it's closed in the winter, she said, and the site is also popular for sledding and cross-country skiing.
Hooper, who died in 1917, willed his mansion on Prospect Hill and the surrounding farmland to Walpole to help train young people for careers in agriculture and forestry.
Today, that mission is carried out by the Hooper Institute. This summer the institute will put on day camps featuring hikes, farm visits and woodworking projects. During the school year, institute educators run programs in local schools.
The golf course was designed by architects Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek and built in 1927. Hooper's original mansion serves as the club's headquarters, while the Hooper Institute operates out of a replica of the mansion across the street.
There is also a cottage on the Hooper property that is rented to another party.
Under the terms of the golf club's new, two-year lease, it will pay $35,000 this year to rent the building and approximately 50 acres of land, according to multiple sources.
That's a $5,000 increase from what the club has paid for the past decade. Next year, its rent will go up to $37,000.
The rent goes directly into the Hooper Institute's operating fund.
Jeffrey Miller, who serves on the golf club's board of directors and is also chairman of Walpole's planning board, said he was surprised by the selectmen's decision to limit the lease renewal to two years. He expressed hope they might change their minds about selling the land.
According to Miller, the golfers offered to sign a lease in which the rent would increase every year.
The terms of the lease have been scrutinized by the N.H. Attorney General's Office, which said the golf club wasn't paying enough rent under the previous $30,000 per year lease.
But the rental rate is not the only problem.
Because the trust is also a landlord, it has to maintain the buildings on its properties, including George Hooper's old house.
"It's a real old building, so it takes quite a lot of money to repair," Selectman Whitney Aldrich said earlier this year.
But because of the way the trust is structured, building maintenance is paid out of a pot of money separate from the fund that supports the institute.
That protects the institute's coffers from being drained to build a new roof, but it also means an increase in the golf club's rent doesn't translate into an increase in the money available to maintain the property.
Instead, the Hooper maintenance fund is replenished by the interest from a portion of George Hooper's cash legacy.
The balance on that portion of the trust is $909,536, according to Jerome Galloway, the trustee of trust funds. Of that, $25,000 is available to spend.
The trustees anticipate that fund will grow by just $4,436 this year, he said.
Should the building on the golf course property need serious repairs, "we'd burn through that $25,000 pretty quickly," Galloway said.
Miller, from the golf club board, said it's possible the club could buy the course itself, but "you'd have to have a creative way to do it."
The course has been assessed at around $900,000, he said, with about $300,000 of that total representing improvements made by the golfers.
But the land may have more value if it were put to a different use.
Aldrich had hoped to sell the land with the condition that it continue as a golf course, but it's unlikely such a restriction would be allowed.
If the property were sold, it would have to be at the value appraised for its "highest and best use," according to Terry M. Knowles, assistant director of the Attorney General's Charitable Trusts Unit.
Some of the land lies in a residential district, and other portions are zoned for rural agricultural use, according to Selectman Sheldon Sawyer.
The land's road frontage is also potentially of interest to developers, he said.
"There would be a certain amount of people, of course -- and probably a lot of people -- who would not like to see wholesale development of the golf course. But we as trustees have to get the highest and best price of sale," Sawyer said.
Nonetheless, he said, the trust has not committed to selling the land, and "there's still a lot of ground work to be done."
tagged with: Hooper golf course, land use, Walpole N.H.
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