Scots drop fight against golf resort

Georgian's plan for St Andrews appears on track

Bert Roughton Jn., Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 4 August 1999

Community leaders in picturesque St Andrews, Scotland, are giving up their fight to stop a Georgia-based developer from adding a 520-acre golf resort to the ancient birthplace of the game. "It's the end of the line as far as the local opposition goes," Frank Riddell, chairman of the St Andrews Community Council, said Tuesday, the day after that body decided against taking legal action to block the development.

It would have been too expensive - and perhaps too quixotic - to try to stop an $80 million project in court, the dejected Riddell said.

"Don Panoz and his big battalions have got the money and they can force this through," he said, referring to the Georgia millionaire and founder of Chateau Elan who is among the project's backers.

"We as the community council, with an income of about £2000 a year, we don't have the money to fight," Riddell said.

Panoz was on vacation Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. But Iain MacKinnon, the project's operations director in Scotland, said the plans already have been adjusted substantially to take local concerns into account.

In MacKinnon's view, the meeting Monday night provided proof that most of the people in the town favour the project.

Riddell sees the project - two golf courses, conference centre, 208-room hotel, luxury cottages, restaurant/bar and spa/leisure complex - as more damage to an already tourist-weary town.

St Andrews, where golf was born more than 500 years ago, already has six courses, including the legendary Old Course and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club. Two more are planned. Every year, about 300,000 visitors pass through the town of 14,500 people on the way to the tees.

"We're doing what we can to reduce traffic in the (centre of town) - which is at its limits - and to deal with our tourism, and this development will cause damage on both counts," Riddell said.

Construction began three weeks ago and is expected to continue for four or five years. Both the late Gene Sarazen and prominent Scottish golfer Sam Torrance were involved in planning the project's two courses.

One course tentatively is set to open by July 2001 and the second, a year later.

The project is being developed by St Andrews Bay Development Ltd., a Scottish subsidiary of Fountainhead Development of Braselton, Ga.

Henk Evers, the CEO of Fountainhead, expressed elation Tuesday that the opposition finally had ended. He and Panoz visited the site in May 1998 and acquired it later that year.

"It's an absolutely stunning site," Evers said. "It's right on the bay, about 2 kilometres from....St Andrews."

The Fife Council, which has authority over planning in the county, approved the plans a month ago.

Referring to Riddell's complaints, MacKinnon said, "All those issues were dealt with before it was approved by the Fife Council. It's a very environmentally conscious area, and with good reason, and we are conscious of that."

The company also intends to meet with the Scottish Heritage Society, a preservation group, to make sure that the project is compatible with its surroundings.

The project will be connected to St Andrews by a coastal path at low tide, and every effort is being made to fit it into the area's green belt efforts, Evers said.

Riddell and others accuse the Fife Council of ignoring its own standards on controlling development in the rush to create jobs. They point bitterly to the fact that none of the Fife Council members who approved the plan comes from St Andrews.

The appeal of being in St Andrews is clear to any golfer, of course. "The birthplace of golf is St Andrews, and that's where it all started," Evers said. Golfers from North America and Japan all want to play in St Andrews, he said. But the project will appeal to Scots, he predicted. And it will be a great addition to the Scottish economy, which already is heavily oriented towards tourism.