Southern Idaho’s oldest golf course is being sold.
American Golf Corp., owner of the 101-year-old Plantation Country Club in Garden City, has told its members that it has a buyer with a purchase agreement in place. The sale is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of the year, American Golf said in a letter signed by general manager Jayson Petersen.
Petersen told the Idaho Statesman the buyer of the 18-hole course at 6515 State St., won’t be publicly identified until the sale closes.
American Golf will be retained to manage the 101-acre course, the letter said. The company operates more than 80 public and private courses in the United States.
Plantation opened as a six-hole course on July 18, 1917. Then known as the Boise Country Club, it opened five years after the state’s oldest golf course, the Hayden Lake Country Club in Northern Idaho.
“We are extremely excited too continue to be part of the operations of Plantation Country Club and look forward to a long-lasting relationship with the new owner as well as continuing the relationship we already enjoy with the existing membership,” Petersen wrote.
Petersen said the country club will continue operating as a golf course and there are no plans for other development.
The club’s historic start
The country club is located where Pierce Park sat from 1907 to 1928. The park and the Pierce Park neighborhood were named for W.E. Pierce, a land developer and president of the Boise and Interurban Railway, which passed by the development. The park included a lake with rowboats, tennis courts, croquet wickets, a bandstand and a picnic area.
The Plantation course was designed by H. Chandler Egan, who won a team gold medal and a silver individual medal at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis and was a member of the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame, Egan designed a number of courses in Oregon and Washington.
The Plantation course had 110 members in 1922, but later suffered from declining membership. There were two consecutive years in that decade when flooding from the Boise River made parts of the course unplayable, according to a history of the Plantation Country Club.
The company that owned the golf course land, the Boise Valley Traction Co., also suffered financial difficulties. Boise residents William Ruth, J.F. Martin and E.L. McElvain bought the golf course and renamed it the Plantation Country Club.
American Golf, through its parent company, AGC Realty of Los Angeles, has owned it since 2016. It was previously owned by National Golf Properties, which merged with American Golf in 2002.
The country club facilities, including the golf course, clubhouse, pro shop and pool, are assessed at $2.6 million, according to Ada County tax records.
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