West Palm golf course to become resort/housing

A site plan for the Banyan Cay Resort & Golf Club and Sam Bauer, who is heading the project
A site plan for the Banyan Cay Resort & Golf Club and Sam Bauer, who is heading the project

Hot on the heels of its $26 million acquisition of a massive golf-course-turned development site in West Palm Beach, the Banyan Cay Dev. company has announced more details about the $280 million project it will be undertaking.

The President Country Club, a 240-acre property split into two golf courses, had been eyed as a major redevelopment opportunity for years by its most recent owner. George T. Elmore, founder of the Hardrive development and construction firm, had paid $11 million for the property in 2011 through his company Palm Tree Golf Management.

Reports say the company began pursuing approvals for a redevelopment on the country club site a year after the purchase, and city commissioners had even granted final approvals for site plans that aimed to turn the property into a resort-style community in March.

Those plans included a hotel, 145 single-family homes, a 20-story condo tower with 200 units and a newly built clubhouse. All of this would be constructed on the country club’s 119-acre northern golf course, which has been closed for some time.

But last week, Elmore’s company traded away the country club to a company titled Banyan Cay Dev., headed by veteran multifamily developer Sam Bauer.

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Bauer told The Real Deal that he had actually been solicited by the seller in the past to buy only a portion of the site. But Bauer and his team, desiring a greater stake in the development, sought to purchase the entire site.

We realized what a unique and special opportunity this was,” Bauer told TRD. “We decided to take on the entire project; we wanted to control its destiny.” 

That begins with changing the project’s name to the Banyan Cay Resort & Golf Club. Besides building the project out within its current approvals, Bauer said his team is finalizing a deal to bring in a national brand to manage the planned hotel, and renovations for the club’s southern golf course — designed by Robert Trent Jones II — are already underway.

It has a fantastic structure; all we have to do to it is really cosmetic,” he said. “Not much has to be done to it to bring it up to a world class resort.”

All together, Bauer said the project will take place over the next five years.