PORT TOWNSEND – The Discovery Bay Golf Club will close the course in the spring.
“It’s been a couple months since we’ve been pondering this decision,” principal owner Mike Asmundson said Wednesday from his Arizona home.
“We’ve seen a pretty steady decline in the last couple of years and can’t continue to lose money on it.
“We can’t continue to subsidize golf in Jefferson County. There’s just not a big enough market.”
Asmundson said when he purchased the course, located at 7401 Cape George Road, in 2004, he commissioned a market study that recommended the course be closed.
Still, Asmundson was optimistic that he could pull the 18-hole public golf course out of its financial rut.
“We, at that time, didn’t believe it. We thought we could save it,” said Asmundson.
Since then, he has spent between $4 and $5 million dollars on it.
“That’s a lot of money,” he said.
His plan to pull the golf course through was to develop 48 residential homes in clusters on 40 acres of the nearly 200 acres he owns.
The course is on 160 acres of open space land.
