Wood Ranch Golf Course Sale Delayed : Development: The builders are given until Jan. 14 to restructure their debt. Club members express relief.
The developers of Simi Valley’s sprawling Wood Ranch community, who were set to lose their tournament golf course in a foreclosure sale today, received an 11th-hour reprieve from their lender.
The public sale of the Wood Ranch Golf Club and about a dozen nearby housing sites has been postponed until Jan. 14, representatives of the lender, Wells Fargo Bank, and the developer, the Olympia/Roberts Co., said Wednesday.
The developers will use the time to try to restructure their $15-million debt to Wells Fargo Bank, said Frank Rugani, a Newport Beach attorney representing Olympia/Roberts.
The firm will also continue trying to sell the golf course and its remaining Wood Ranch land, which could accommodate about 1,500 new dwellings and may be worth as much as $100 million.
Olympia/Roberts “would like to have buyers for any or all of the properties they have at Wood Ranch,” Rugani said.
Olympia/Roberts is a partnership owned by the American subsidiary of Olympia & York, one of the world’s largest real estate businesses. Olympia & York’s Canadian parent company, reeling from a worldwide real estate slump, sought court protection from its creditors early this year.
The American subsidiary has not begun bankruptcy proceedings but is trying to restructure its debt, company spokesmen said.
Rugani said Olympia/Roberts executives want Wells Fargo to give them more time “so that they can make an orderly disposition of the (Wood Ranch) property at the highest prices.”
Wood Ranch is a 3,000-acre planned community on rolling terrain in southwest Simi Valley.
An agreement between Olympia/Roberts and the city, adopted during the early 1980s, called for the construction of 4,026 residences, a golf course, a small shopping center, an equestrian center and public amenities such as a fire station and a school.
City officials said that about 2,400 residences, the fire station and the first phase of the shopping center have been built.
Selling the remaining land may be difficult, real estate experts said, because banks are making fewer development loans, and fewer people are buying new houses.
“I think Wood Ranch is a beautiful community and will continue to be one,” said Bob Levenstein, president of the Roberts Group and a former partner in Olympia/Roberts. “But it’s a tough real estate market, and land is selling slowly.”
Tom Larmore, an attorney for Wells Fargo, said he was aware that Olympia/Roberts wants more time to sell its remaining Wood Ranch land.
“I’m sure that would be Olympia/Roberts’ desire,” Larmore said. “Whether anything like that will happen is speculative.”
Members of the Wood Ranch Golf Club, who paid up to $40,000 each to join, expressed relief Wednesday when they learned that the bank-ordered sale of the 18-hole, 200-acre course had been postponed.
At a club meeting Sunday, a 10-person committee set up to protect members’ rights was told to go to court, if necessary.
“The committee had authorization from the membership to take whatever action was necessary to stop the sale,” said Clifford H. Pearson, a Tarzana attorney who serves on the committee. “We needed time to evaluate what our rights are.”
He added, “Now, we have to go to the next step, to open some lines of communication with Olympia/Roberts or Olympia & York to find out what their plans are and how the membership figures into the equation.”
The club has more than 400 golf members and about 100 social members. Pearson said the members are concerned that a new owner could dramatically increase the number of members by charging lower fees or turn Wood Ranch into a public course or simply kick out the current members.
Rugani said he could not comment on whether the members’ fears are justified. “I don’t have an answer for that because I don’t have a buyer who’s signed an agreement to buy the golf course,” he said.
Pearson said the golf members have no ownership shares in the club. But he said the bylaws give them the right to match any outside offer if the course is put up for sale.
Although some members want to buy the course, “it just might be unrealistic in these difficult economic times,” Pearson said.
Simi Valley Unified School district officials are also keeping an eye on the Wood Ranch sale plans.
Mary Beth Wolford, deputy superintendent, said Olympia/Roberts was required to donate land and pay for the construction of an elementary school when 250 students were found to be living in Wood Ranch.
She said Wood Ranch has more than 250 students, and the district plans to seek bids in the spring and begin building the school next summer. Wolford said no homeowner assessment district was set up to fund the school, and the cost, estimated at almost $6 million, is the developer’s responsibility.
Olympia/Roberts could try to save money by using its own crews to build the school. But Wolford said the developer would have to abide by the state’s rigorous school construction codes.
Rugani, the developers’ attorney, said the agreement with the school district “is in place, and Olympia/Roberts has complied with all of its obligations under that agreement to date.”
City officials said that if Olympia/Roberts sells its undeveloped Wood Ranch land, the new buyer would inherit the school-building requirement.
But if the developer cannot sell the land and seeks protection from its creditors under bankruptcy laws, construction of the school could be delayed, city and school district officials said.
