By Alan Blondin

The Sun News

The Sun News file photo

• Green Acres likely to face redevelopment | Comment
• View all the area's courses that have closed or are changing

Eastport Golf Club may have played its final round of golf on Thursday.

Course owner Mel Graham of Charlotte, N.C., closed the 19-year-old layout in Little River after the final golfers putted out late Thursday afternoon, the same day he filed the course for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The future of golf on the course could depend on the outcome of the bankruptcy filing.

"There's a time and a season for everything, and Eastport's time has come and gone," Graham said. "It hasn't been able to make it for the past several years without personal loans from me and I'm not going to do it anymore."

The bankruptcy filing is the latest and possibly the final chapter in a dispute with neighboring homeowners that led to a lawsuit filed more than a year ago by residents to stop a proposed development.

Graham said he expects a development proposal to be part of his bankruptcy filing.

Graham said without funding from added development, Eastport became a casualty of a market that was overbuilt during a boom in the 1990s. "It's the same story most golf courses in Myrtle Beach can tell," Graham said.

Decreased profits in the market at least partially caused by a glut of courses, combined with the rising cost of real estate and a housing boom, have led to the closing for redevelopment of 288 Grand Strand holes, the equivalent of 16 courses, over the past two years.

Graham said competition for rounds caused him to drop combined greens and cart fee rates below $30 for much of the year, while operating costs have continued to rise.

"Courses like Eastport, you're playing for cart fees," Graham said. "The expense line is skyrocketing upward and revenue line is skyrocketing down."

Chapter 11 allows Graham to reorganize or liquidate pursuant to a plan, which he'll submit to the bankruptcy court in the coming months. Graham said his reorganization plan will be similar to a development proposal he's already partially pitched to residents and Horry County planning officials.

It involves adding housing, making Eastport private for residents and shortening the course to resemble an executive layout consisting of only par-3s and par-4s.

"The reorganization plan is going to be precisely what I've been proposing and presenting for the past year," said Graham, who altered an initial master plan that eliminated the golf course. "It includes keeping the course and putting money into it to refurbish it and make it a nice facility again."

Graham received approval from Horry County Council to begin building the first phase of an Eastport redevelopment plan. The first phase consists of 100 one- to three-bedroom condos in five buildings off the entrance road next to Oakwood Circle. But construction has been delayed by the lawsuit.

Homeowners claim Graham signed a restriction from redeveloping the course when he purchased it. "There's no end in sight to that [lawsuit] so we got to the point where Eastport can't make it," Graham said. "Unless there's a plan approved that involves development I don't think it will ever be a golf course again. I think it's done. The only way it will survive as a golf course again, in my opinion, is with a development that supports it."

The bankruptcy filing puts the homeowners' claims of a restriction on development in doubt. Norman Foschia, president of the Moorings Homeowners Association within Eastport and vice president of the five-member Eastport Board of Directors, said Graham has been threatening a bankruptcy filing for months.

"There have always been threats of doing this because he always wanted to do away with the golf course," Foschia said.

Whether the course emerges from bankruptcy through a reorganization plan or is liquidated and sold, it's likely the land won't look as it does now.

Graham said there are no employees or dollars to maintain it. "It's going to become a nice field," Graham said. "The golf course will grow over and the lakes will turn green and stagnant with bugs and mosquitoes. It's not going to be a pretty park any more."