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The future of the land currently owned by the Las Cruces Country Club Golf Course is still up in the air. The City of Las Cruces may no longer be interested in the property. When you drive on Main street, you’ll notice a sign and a big change happening to the land that use to be theLas Cruces Country Club Golf Course.
“The facility is shut down. It is not a golf course at this point in time,” said Robert Caldwell, vice-president of the Board of Directors for the Las Cruces Country Club.
The Las Cruces Country Club owns the 110-acre property which it’s selling for 8-million dollars. The land has been empty since November and it shows.
“We don’t have a caretaker on the property. We don’t have employees that are out there doing maintenance doing that any longer so it is an idle piece of property,” he said.
When the board started closing down the facility, they appointed a board member to oversee the upkeep of the property. That person is in charge of making sure the land is up to code with the City of Las Cruces. Leaders with the organization say they don’t expect a major problem with weeds or trash or even dying trees during the sale of the golf course.
“We do have an interest in being good, community partners and we really have an interest in staying together as a golf club,” he said.
The Las Cruces Country Club continues to negotiate with potential buyers. The City of Las Cruces recently offered one million dollars for the property, but that price was rejected by the organization. Mayor Ken Miyagishima.
“We were hoping to have probably about 80 to 70 percent of the space available for public use, meaning if we did acquire it, we would probably have to sell about 30 percent to make up for not only the purchase price, but also for the on-going maintenance,” he said.
The mayor says the asking price is just too expensive for the city to afford right now. Miyagishima says the chances the city will obtain the golf course in the future is pretty slim.
“We’re not actually seeking areas for parks. We are however, when we developed the police and fire complex that comes with it, several hundred acres that we can use for additional ball fields, soccer fields, baseball fields, and softball fields. So we’re confident we’ll get that this was just an opportunity that orose and we felt that we needed to at least give it our best shot at it,” he said.
In the meantime, officials with the Las Cruces Golf Course voted last week to continue searching for buyers interested in the property and in its water rights.
