Top 3 Officials of Golf Development Replaced

The three top officials of the ambitious Spanish Hills Golf & Country Club development in Camarillo are being replaced, but the Japanese-controlled firm in charge of the project denies that slow home-site sales in the project’s early stages are behind the shake-up.

Charles Stricklin, president and co-managing director, is leaving April 1 to pursue other interests, according to Ty McCutcheon, marketing coordinator of the project, which is being developed by Sato Kogyo Co. Ltd.

Makoto Miura, senior manager, and Masakazu Ochiai, co-managing director, are also leaving but have been reassigned to the parent company’s headquarters in Tokyo, McCutcheon said.

Replacing them in as-yet unspecified positions will be Toshihiko Uchimaru, Frank Howington and Katsuhiko Hayashi. “Japanese companies move people around a lot. That’s their traditional way of doing business,” McCutcheon said.

In almost two years since the developers started marketing home sites, only nine lots have been sold.

But McCutcheon maintained that things are picking up, saying that 29 other lots have been reserved for prospective buyers and that the country club now has 550 members.