thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

Let rumors about Laurel Valley Golf Course be buried in its new sand traps.

According to new principal owner Doug Robertson, the club property will remain a golf course. No high-rise condos will grow on these fairways and greens.

Robertson, a Florida businessman who built a vacation home four years ago in Laurel Valley outside Townsend, is pledging to keep the resort and retirement development true to its original community concept.

"And keeping it as a golf course," Robertson said last week as he sat in the oft-closed clubhouse restaurant above the valley bounded by 3,200-foot-high Ridge Mountain.

A few days ago the future of the Laurel Valley Golf course was about as certain as a one-iron fade from a tight lie to an island green.

The fate of Laurel Valley Golf Course was to be determined by the crack of an auctioneer's gavel on Aug. 22 as part of the Harold King Sr. estate auction. That was preempted by a last-minute deal cut between the estate managed by trustee Susan King, wife of the late real estate investor, and Laurel Valley Conservation LLC.

Purchase price for the golf course and several other Laurel Valley properties: $1.5 million.

The limited liability company is made up of Doug and Cindy Robertson (70 percent ownership with 18 shares available for sale), Clem and Shala Block (Oak Ridge physician with 15 percent), Chad and Amy Rochelle (Parkside Realty Services, 10 percent) and David and Janet Latham (he's general manager and course superintendent and she's pro shop manager, 5 percent).

After the contract was signed, Rochelle outlined plans for Laurel Valley's future in an e-mail to the community's property owners:

Total renovation of clubhouse, swimming pool, banquet facilities and pro shop (offering full line of Laurel Valley merchandise);

Course improvements such as renovation and landscaping of maintenance buildings/course bathrooms, new fleet of golf carts, raising/leveling of tee boxes and addition of landscaping/water features throughout;

Addition of services such as restaurant (which will not be leased to an outside entity), construction of fitness center, tennis courts and pavilion with outdoor fireplace and picnic tables.

Robertson, 49 -- owner of CNC Cabinet Components and Building Materials in Melbourne, Fla., and Building Materials Center, also in Melbourne -- has been involved in construction since his mid 20s. Ask him about his plans for the Laurel Valley clubhouse and he ticks off particulars like a rapid-fire nail gun.

"Basically guttin' the place. Ceiling, everything's coming down out of here. That wall's going to go into a giant sliding glass door. We're cutting the chimney back, moving the bar around, making the kitchen a little bit bigger, redoing the whole pool, all the railing, the fence, the decking out here.

"We're putting a 16-by-42 deck upstairs off of the banquet room. It will be kept up high enough not to interfere with the view here but will create shade for the tables out here," Robertson said as he gestured past the clubhouse deck toward the mountains.

There's more: 25 new commercial chaise lounges, concrete colonial siding on the exterior, new roof, tiled bathrooms in the clubhouse and new restrooms on the course, fixed-up maintenance shed and cart barn, restored lake between No. 2 green and No. 3 tee.

"We've already applied for our state permit for that. Hole No. 2 will become an island green. We're going to take the lake right around in front of it. If you're short, you're wet."

Work is under way. The drop ceiling in the restaurant is pulled. A new flat-screen HD model is in the TV room off the pro shop, and new stock for the shop is on order. Truckloads of topsoil and bags of pine bark have arrived. The next load of fertilizer will be the good stuff, the kind used on PGA courses.

Robertson hauled up his smoker from Florida and already put it to use feeding barbecue to his employees.

He plans to invest $500,000 in phase-one enhancements with $200,000 more available, if needed. Improvements to facilities -- which have admittedly been maintained on a shoestring budget -- will be reflected in fees, but to a limited degree. Current cost is $30 for an 18-hole round.

"We want to protect all the locals, the regulars here, with some type of card. The out-of-towners are going to pay more, but it's still going to be affordable. We're going to ease it up to probably around $45 a round by next spring for the tourists."

Still a bargain by Florida standards, Robertson said.

Tiebout talks

Higher fees for better amenities don't cause Laurel Valley residents Lt. Gen. Robert A. Tiebout (Marine Corps, retired) or his wife, Lil, to flinch. They want to see the promise of Laurel Valley fulfilled.

"Just look at that view out there. You'll never, ever duplicate that anyplace. People want to come up here," Bob Tiebout said.

But the Tiebouts didn't retire to Tuckaleechee Cove just for the view. They came for the community.

"There's no better place than right here to ever live. I think I can attest to that because I've lived all over this country. The people ... they are genuine."

And genuinely skeptical, given the history of the Laurel Valley development.

"You've got to understand, people have been burned here a lot of times. I've been burned here for 15 years. I was part of one of the teams up here trying to put this thing together, trying to make it work. People finally got disgusted," Tiebout said.

All that history can be buried with action, according to the Tiebouts.

"It's going to take some real marketing and some real visual types of things, and people are going to say, 'My god, this is wonderful.' And they'll be right here. I guarantee they'll be right here."

Lil Tiebout agreed. She believes Laurel Valley and the rest of the community will rally to return the club to what it was -- once they are convinced of its renewal.

"All you've got to do is change the image," she said.