.

Flint Hills owner uninterested in troubled Cottonwood Hills
   By Pat Sangimino, The Hutchinson News

   The padlocked front gate of Cottonwood Hills Golf Club is a conversation piece much like the chained iron gate once proved to be at a certain fictitious chocolate factory.
   That's not to say Lane Neville is Hutchinson's Willy Wonka. He's not, but he may be its pied piper.
   After all, he did some serious convincing to get a group of investors to pony up the reported

$15 million necessary to build Cottonwood Hills. And you have to admit the Hutchinson High graduate, whose dream of turning 685 acres of East Reno County grazing land into a high-end golf community, has created quite a mystique with his seemingly botched business model.
   With every passing day, a golf-hungry community wonders when the locks might be removed. It's virtually the same way the make-believe English village collectively buzzed when the smokestacks at the chocolate factory began to billow.
   Maybe it's because Neville, with the help of Nick Faldo, created something special in a golf course that, while never living up to its financial potential, was considered one of the top courses in the region the day it opened for business nearly three years ago.
   There's no doubting the chatter it has generated. It's a regular topic for the countless coffee-drinking get-togethers and the regulars at Carey Park, alike.
   They've talked at length about the golf course not opening - as had been promised - in early April. They've ruminated about the electricity supposedly being turned off at Cottonwood, how the golf carts and equipment had been repossessed and how the fairways have yet to be watered this year.
   And then last week, it was rumored that Wichita businessman Tom Devlin, the owner of Flint Hills National Golf Club in Andover, had purchased Cottonwood for a reported $1.8 million.
   It's not true, Devlin insists.
   There is no Golden Ticket.
   Even for pennies on the dollar, it wouldn't have made sound business sense, says Devlin, the man who founded Rent-A-Center in the 1970s and sold the ever-expanding company in 1987 for a reported $594 million.
   In other words, $1.8 million is pocket change for a man like Devlin. However, the course needs work. A clubhouse needs to be built and the gravel driveway that sits just on the other side of the locked front gate needs to be paved, he said.
   That's about $4 million more on top of the initial investment, he said.
   "Someone is going to have to invest a lot of money and then hope they can get it back to even," he said.
   And that doesn't even begin to address the money necessary to change the public perception of a golf course that is mired in a financial quagmire.
   "With any business that gets a bad reputation, it's hard to ever change the opinion of it and ever get people to think well about it," Devlin said. "Once people think you're bad, you're bad."
   Cottonwood's financial dilemma is well-documented. Neville's original plan called for the golf course to spur interest in the area, which would lead to hundreds of families dropping between $75,000 and $100,000 for lots, on which high-end houses would be built.
   But before the lots could be sold, infrastructure - water and electrical lines and paved streets - had to be installed. Securing the $13 million necessary to do that work three years ago was challenging. And that challenge turned to a near impossibility when the global credit market ground to a halt amid the economic downturn.
   This golf course, we've learned, no matter how good, cannot survive without the housing component.
   And that's where Devlin sees Cottonwood's biggest flaw.
   "It's too close to Prairie Dunes," he says.
   Given the choice between buying a high-end home on Prairie Dunes or Cottonwood Hills, which would you choose? Devlin asks.
   "If you didn't have Prairie Dunes right there, Cottonwood has the ability to be a nice golf course," he said. "You could bring in the right architect to make some changes to a few of the holes. You build a small clubhouse.
   "But even with that, what are you going to charge for a green fee? You have to increase the revenue."
   Devlin's solution is simple, at least in theory. Prairie Dunes needs to buy Cottonwood Hills and make all of the necessary improvements. It also needs to build some lodges on the grounds, which would serve the out-of-town membership.
   "All of a sudden, you would have a sister club available," Devlin said. "People coming in from out of town could play Prairie Dunes in the morning and Cottonwood in the afternoon. It would solve everything."
   Of course, it's not as simple as that. Asking the Prairie Dunes membership to take on the financial burden caused by Cottonwood Hills is nothing more than a pipe dream. But if it's a choice between that or keeping the padlocks on the front gate, there's no question which one Devlin prefers.
   Actually, he prefers any scenario that doesn't include his name.
   "Hutchinson is a great golf town," he says. "They deserve another good golf course, but I am not buying it."

-- published in The Hutchinson News/hutchnews.com May 13, 2010, and re-published here with permission