Boone Golf Club Wants Houses on the 9th Fairway

Boone Golf Club's owners want out. They wrote it down and handed it to the town.

Page one of the zoning booklet on tonight's council agenda says the majority of the club's stockholders "have decided they would like to sell the property and wish to maximize the value of their investment." The reason, in their own words. The property is "much more valuable as a housing development than it is as a golf course operation." No appraisal. No comparable sales. No market study offered. Just the claim.

Then the argument. The owners acknowledge that the community "feels very strongly that this site should remain as a key area recreational facility." They're sympathetic, they say, as "multi-generational residents of Boone themselves." And they conclude the plan will "satisfy their need to maximize their value and preserve a community asset."

They don't say how they know what the community feels, though council had already received what the November minutes call "numerous emails" about the project.

The booklet's conclusions section puts it harder, under a heading reading "Competing demands are resolved." The sellers are owed the highest price, it says, while the local population and visitors "feel they have some entitlement to the course.”

Both at once. That is 153 acres inside the town limits at 433 Fairway Drive, and a plan its authors say has "very few community impacts and many benefits."

All 18 holes stay.

Whatever else this plan does, the golf course survives it.

As drawn, the plan carves three pods out of the course and rebuilds the holes around them. Site 1 takes the old 9th fairway for 22 townhouses. Site 2 takes the existing practice range for 32 cottage lots, roughly 50 by 100 feet each. Site 3 is just over two acres off Kellwood Drive beside the 11th hole, where two buildings of 14 condominiums and a third of eight stacked flats would go.

That's about 90 units on roughly 11 of the property's 153 acres. Except the booklet can't agree with itself on the number.

The text says 22 townhouses on the old 9th fairway. Twice.

The site plan for that same parcel is titled "40 Townhouse Units."

The conclusions section says the request totals 96 across the three sites, with "about 30 units in each area."

Deputy Planning Director Brandon Wise says no firm count is required until the applicants actually file.

The three sites aren't the whole ask either. The booklet folds in the clubhouse area too, "to allow for renovation and expansion of the clubhouse and additional uses." It does not say what those additional uses would be.

The strongest fact here isn't in the booklet. It's in the minutes of the Nov. 12, 2025 council meeting, recording what the club's own president told them:

He noted that two parties had expressed interest in purchasing the course and leaving it unchanged, and while he remained open to that possibility, he believed the proposed plan offered greater long-term value.

That's Austin Adams, now the club's president. He also told council the team had evaluated a dozen different options and believed the current concept was the best solution for the broader community. But there were buyers who wanted no houses on it at all.

The booklet frames the plan as doing both at once, maximizing what the stockholders get while keeping a community asset. By the president's own account, keeping the asset never required any of this. Someone was willing to buy the course and leave it alone. No rezoning, no houses. That path just paid less. The booklet doesn't hide why they went the other way. The sellers, it says, have "every right to expect the highest price for the asset they own."

Neither the November minutes nor tonight’s booklet says who those parties were, or whether they're still interested. Emails sent to Austin Adams, the club's president, and Tom Adams, its secretary and treasurer, bounced back undelivered.

That November meeting was the first version of this, and it looked nothing like what council sees tonight.

A team led by engineer Jay Patrick Warren and golf course builder Rick Robbins pitched a far bigger redevelopment then. A restaurant, a sports bar, a 30-unit lodge, a traffic study they were in talks with Kimley-Horn to commission across a dozen intersections. Wise says that version would have cut golf to nine holes.

What comes back tonight is smaller in almost every direction. Less housing. Almost none of the public amenities. No traffic study behind it. And a full 18-hole course instead of nine.

The November audience was a different council, too. Tim Futrelle presided as mayor. Dalton George, who holds that chair now, sat as mayor pro tem.

Robbins hasn't gone anywhere, though. The master plan in this year's booklet still carries his firm's name, Robbins Golf Design of Morrisville, in its title block.

The owners can't build this today, and it isn't close. RA zoning permits single-family homes and one duplex per lot. Townhouses, condominiums and stacked flats aren't on its list of permitted uses at all, and the cottage lots would run about half the minimum lot size the district allows. So they're asking council to write them a tailored district, the same conditional district machinery the Walk at Boone used last month.

In November, George listed three things that would move him closer to yes:

• A more robust affordability component.

• Conversations with the Blue Ridge Conservancy.

• Proof of environmental certifications.

The August booklet contains none of the three.

He also said the public amenities "helped make the proposal more reasonable." The new plan strips most of them out.

George made the other half of the argument himself, twice. Under current zoning the land "could still be developed with large single-family homes ('McMansions') by right."

Council can say no to this. It can't say no houses.

Site 3 is where the booklet makes its civic argument. Those 36 units "would be an ideal location for workforce housing which has a huge unmet demand in Boone."

Nothing in the document backs that up. No income target tied to the area median. No covenant. No term of years. No set-aside. No count of how many of the 36 units would actually be workforce units. Asked what the applicants have in mind, Wise said they'd raised an affordability target with staff, but that "at this point I'm not sure if the applicant knows what their end goal would be."

It's the second time the number has gone missing. In November, Robbins told council the workforce share "could be 15-20 percent or more," and that many units would naturally be affordable. Ten months later, the booklet doesn't carry a percentage at all.

There's a place where the number would have to become real. Before an application can be filed, the ordinance requires a neighborhood meeting, and requires the applicant to submit minutes documenting "any and all commitments made by the petitioner." Those minutes go into the board packet.

A promise made there is written down. A promise made tonight is not.

Traffic gets the same treatment. Impacts "should be minimal," the booklet says, because the units sit in three neighborhoods with separate access points and no road between them. That is an argument, not a measurement.

One claim in the booklet does hold up under checking. Nine holes of the current course sit in the floodplain, as Robbins told council in November, and he said no housing would go in the flood zone based on new maps he expected in 2028.

The booklet says only that all three sites are out of the flood plain and floodway, without saying which maps. Asked directly, Wise says the claim rests on the current effective maps, and that the preliminary maps now in circulation are "much reduced" from those, so a site that's clear on today's maps is clear on tomorrow's too. He's not sure the 2028 date holds.

Anyone can check both. The state's flood risk viewer at fris.nc.gov/map toggles between effective and preliminary.

Eric Plaag, then on council, made the point that matters. The minutes record him noting that over the past 15 years, excluding Helene, the area had experienced seven 100-year events, floods with a one percent chance of occurring in any given year. He said he wouldn't support the project if any housing sat in a flood zone on either the current or the upcoming maps.

Nothing has been filed. Tonight's item is an informal discussion under requested appearances, a practice Wise says the current council recently adopted so an applicant can read the room in public. The owners present, council listens. No vote, no case number, no staff report. Council convenes at 5 p.m. in the Council Chambers at 1500 Blowing Rock Road, and the golf item is fifth on the agenda, after a work session on annexation policy.

Nothing tonight decides whether it advances. That's the owners' call, and it happens when they file a conditional district application. If they do, the next joint council and Planning Commission public hearing on the calendar is Sept. 28.

One thing no document names is the buyer. Not the two parties from November, who wanted the course left alone, but whoever ends up purchasing the entitled land. The booklet says as much, that "a buyer of the property may have different ideas for unit types, sizes and density."

They want the zoning so they can sell.