Expend huge amounts of taxpayer money, talk your way into hosting the U.S. Open,
make hay while the sun shines and then hope?
Hosting the U.S. Open is starting to pay off for Pierce County’s Chambers Bay golf course.
The
course recorded a $435,000 profit in 2014 — its second straight year
operating in the black – as total revenue rose 15 percent to $6.9
million.
Mostly from selling merchandise to tourists wanting to experience what's hot (in golf) for the moment. But the Open will be over after this June and;
The county borrowed $20.7 million in 2005 to build the links-style
course on the site of a former gravel mine. Today, it owes $17.5 million
on those original bonds, which is to be paid off over about 20 years.
Will there be a return to normalcy?
Before
2013, the golf course hadn’t broken even since its 2008 peak. It even
lost money in 2010, when it attracted national exposure by playing host
to the U.S. Amateur.
Pierce County's taxpayers can keep their fingers crossed;
“There’s going to be an afterglow after the Open,” [County Executive Pat McCarthy] said. “There’s
going to be a heightened interest to take a plane and come to this part
of the country and golf an American-style Scottish course.”
Besides, it's other peoples money, isn't it?
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