For the past six years, golf director Bela Nagy has been working on plans to replace the outdated and outgrown clubhouse at the Sandridge Golf Club.
Finally, it appears, his dream for upgrading the wildly popular, county-owned facility will become a reality.
The County Commission voted unanimously last week to accept an $11.2-million bid to build a 22,000-square-foot clubhouse that includes a pro shop, restaurant with a bar area and full-service kitchen, and banquet rooms with the capacity to serve 200 guests.
Construction is scheduled to begin in June, with completion expected in August 2026.
The existing clubhouse will remain operational until the new structure opens. It will then be demolished, and the site will be used as a cart-staging area and for parking.
The new clubhouse, which will be built to the immediate west of the existing one and have its own driveway leading to the front entrance, will overlook the 10th and 18th holes of The Lakes course.
The plans also call for the creation of an event lawn – able to hold up to 300 people – behind the clubhouse, and the paving of an additional 125 parking spaces.
“I see no wrong in this,” Commissioner Joe Earman said at the board’s meeting two Tuesdays ago. “If you build it, they will come.”
Actually, “they” are already coming – more of them every year.
Nagy told commissioners that Sandridge, which has been ranked among Florida’s top 10 public courses by multiple industry outlets, has seen a 36 percent increase in rounds played and 65 percent increase in revenue since 2019.
During the 2023-24 fiscal year, a club-record 129,000 rounds were played on the facility’s two 18-hole courses – The Lakes and The Dunes – as the self-sustaining operation generated more than $5 million in total revenue.
One March day last year, with Daylight Saving Time in effect, a whopping 560 rounds were played.
“Since COVID, the rounds of golf have skyrocketed,” Nagy said, noting that the open-to-the-public club also has played host to more than 40 tournaments, including events sponsored by the American Junior Golf Association, South Florida PGA and Minor League Tour.
In addition, Sandridge runs its own golf leagues for men, women and couples, and has served as the home of leagues formed by Vero Beach-area communities, such as Sea Oaks, Marbrisa, The Lakes at Waterway Village, and Village Green.
Other local groups regularly reserve tee times.
That stream of activity has enabled the club to annually increase its net revenue and solidify its place among the state’s few public courses that turn a profit.
“It’s a busy place,” Nagy said of Sandridge, which was the brainchild of former county commissioner Dick Bird, who envisioned in the mid-1980s a county-run public golf course that offered the feel of a private club.
The club opened in 1987, and a clubhouse was built in 1992.
“The course enjoys a tremendous reputation and success,” Assistant County Administrator Mike Zito said before the commissioners voted 5-0 to approve the construction contract with West Palm Beach-based Quest Contracting.
“One glaring deficiency is our amenities,” he added, “so we have been proposing to build a clubhouse for a few years now.”
The commission, in fact, approved the architectural design for a new clubhouse and other amenities in February 2022, when Nagy estimated the project’s price tag at $5.5 million.
Bids from contractors came in substantially higher, however, with most hovering in the $15 million range. The county rejected the bids, and the project was postponed for more than a year.
“We thought that, although the course (revenues) could support it, in the long run it was just too much for a public course – and too many dollars to borrow,” Zito explained. “So we sharpened our pencil.”
Seeking a more reasonable cost, Nagy scaled back the scope of his plan and, during that process, discovered he could reduce costs by using a chain of lakes on the property to provide reclaimed water for the new clubhouse’s fire-suppression system.
He also removed “some other bells and whistles,” as Zito called them.
Also making the revised plan’s costs more palatable was that the project includes site work that needed to be done anyway, to expand paved parking and improve traffic flow to accommodate the increasing volume of people the facility currently serves.
The number of paved parking spots will increase from 85 to 210, which is expected to eliminate the need to park cars in grassy areas of the property.
Both Nagy and the commissioners seemed satisfied with the more financially friendly plan.
“The plan is beautiful,” Commission Chairman Joe Flescher said, adding, “It can turn quite lucrative, especially on a site where we have one of the most-coveted venues. … This is a tremendous asset.”
Commission Vice Chairman Deryl Loar cited the project as a “fine example of us being the bank” that will help finance the construction of the new clubhouse.
“It’s a win-win,” he said.
Not that the county really had a choice.
Nagy said the existing clubhouse, which is little more than a small pro shop and undersized snack bar with bathrooms, wasn’t built to meet the facility’s current demand.
It simply cannot handle the many events that attract 100 or more golfers, especially on hot days.
The new clubhouse will be equipped with a commercial-level kitchen that can accommodate both the restaurant and two 100-person banquet rooms, which will be made available for lease for weddings and other social events.
Nagy, who has worked at Sandridge for 30 years and hopes the new facility will be his legacy, said the banquet facility will provide an additional revenue stream by attracting a different type of business to the club.
Business, though, is already booming.
“If we had a third course,” Nagy told the commissioners, “we could fill it.”
Photos by Joshua Kodis
