Hole in one? Richman Group buys part of Boca golf course to build apartments

Richman Group bought a large portion of the Boca Dunes Golf & Country Club in Boca Raton for $12.5 million.

Cove Club Investors, which is led by David Welch of Lighthouse Point, sold 55 acres of the 98-acre golf course to Richman, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based apartment developer. Richman paid about $227,000 per acre for its share of Boca Dunes, at 1400 Southwest 65th Avenue. Richman financed the deal with a $6.8 million loan from SunTrust Bank, property records show.

The site was seeking approval under a previous developer to build 446 multifamily units, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

Homebuilder K. Hovnanian previously bought part of the golf course and is building 211 townhouses.

Richman Group has over 1,500 properties across the country and says it is the seventh largest owner of apartment rentals in the U.S. In South Florida, it is building Blu27, a 330-unit building at 2701 Biscayne Boulevard in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood.

Increasingly, homebuilders like Lennar and Toll Brothers are buying up golf courses in South Florida and building single-family and townhouse communities. At the end of 2018, in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, there were 177 18-hole equivalent golf course facilities, down from 189 in 2007, according to the National Golf Foundation.