One of the oldest golf courses on the Grand Strand is facing foreclosure. The Conway Country Club needs a quick infusion of cash or the 75-year-old course could go under.
The course's board of directors say they need to sell a few hundred shares in the club at $250 each to raise enough money to avoid default. And they need to do it soon.
"We have to raise, according to the bank, $75,000 and we don't have an exact date, but we are in the short row, so to speak," said Thomas Floyd, president of the club's board of directors.
The course has been part of a weekly tradition for Kathryn Price since 1988. Price and other members of the Conway Ladies League get together each week for a round of golf at the country club and she's concerned about what will happen if the course goes away.
"I don't know. We've talked about it, wondered where we're gonna go," said Price.
"I count it as a gift," added Theresa Myers of Conway, another member of the ladies group. "It's just a blessing to get to come out here and get my exercise."
Floyd said he was told the loan payment that's needed to keep the club alive is due in March, so "time is of the essence."
He said the last few years have been difficult for the golf business. Those tough times, Floyd said, along with some poor planning, resulted in the course falling behind on payments on a loan it took out some years ago to rework the course greens and pool area.
If the board can't raise enough money in time, Floyd said what is now a golf course will turn into houses or something else. "We've got beautiful land here and it's right in the middle of the city of Conway. I'm 99.9 percent sure it's gonna become a development."
That prospect would not go over well with most people who own homes next to the course.
"If it leaves, then of course we are afraid, because we have small children, of the effects of larger businesses coming in and then taking away from that quaintness that's here," said Julie Clardy, whose back yard abuts the course.
Floyd said the golf course is an institution, a real gem to the City of Conway. He said it'll take the whole community to realize what a gem the course is, and step up to keep it.
"If we're gonna save it, it's gonna take the community to save it," he said. "It's gonna take the businesses to save it. They're what made the course originally."
According to a history of the club on its web site, Conway Country Club is the third oldest golf course in Horry County and the oldest outside of Myrtle Beach.
