Golf Course Mogul Tees Up Bandon Future

By Peter Sleeth, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Feb. 4–BANDON — The Chicago greeting card magnate who turned a stretch of isolated coastal dunes into one of the most highly rated golf complexes in the world has been quietly buying up nearly 1,000 more acres of land on the Southern Oregon coast, according to land records in Curry and Coos counties.

Michael Keiser also has taken the unusual step of helping finance a proposed 90-foot dam just two miles outside this coastal town — an attempt to help local cranberry farmers flood their bogs, which will provide more capacity to an expanding Bandon and, potentially, to water new golf courses.

Keiser’s investments are watched closely here. His world-class Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has transformed southern Coos County in just seven years, replacing jobs in the fishing and timber industry with up to 900 jobs at the resort. He spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on social purposes — the Nature Conservancy, Southwestern Oregon Community College and Marshfield High are among his recipients — and employs several hundred people at his courses.

Keiser’s most recent purchases signal one more step toward transforming this area from a onetime rural logging enclave to a version of California’s Monterey Peninsula, featuring multiple high-end golf courses, signature ocean views and eye-popping real estate prices. Bandon has already taken on more of the patina of an exclusive resort town, with $1 million oceanfront condominiums and private jets streaking into its tiny airport.

Since the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort opened in 1999, the number of corporate jets landing at the small Bandon airport has doubled to about 50 a year, said Frank Crook, a contract pilot at the airstrip. A larger airport in nearby North Bend attracts larger jets, both commercial and private.

The upward pressure of such prosperity is that nearly half the city’s workers can’t afford to live here, City Manager Matt Winkel said.

Keiser said last week that he is considering building at least one more golf course on his property south of Bandon — in addition to the four, 18-hole courses he owns north of the city. Further, another golf course owned by a Eugene couple is under construction south of Bandon.

The rest of Keiser’s land, including more than 300 acres on the Pistol River in Curry County, will mostly be used as conservation areas to preserve the beauty of the south Coast, he said. The multiple purchases range from 10 acres to 235 acres in Coos County, and are primarily farms.

The news of another golf course brings mixed feelings to local residents. With another course south of town, Bandon could easily become a new golf destination, “probably like no other place in the nation, or the world,” Winkel said.

But such growth comes at a price.

The golfing is so good that some visitors buy vacation homes in Bandon so they can play as often as possible. Real estate prices go up, as a result, making houses hard for locals to afford.

Winkel said he expects the number of affluent new homeowners to continue to increase as more golf courses are built.

As Oregon’s population continues to grow, water is becoming the new currency up and down the coast.

In the coastal, temperate climate, water would seemingly be the last thing in short supply. Bandon receives an average of 59 inches of rain each year, has a major river flowing through town and an ocean on its western border. Yet Bandon officials project they have enough drinking water to last only 17 more years, trusting that growth will remain moderate. The city needs a new water source, and the new golf courses will, too.

Keiser said he bought into a 15 percent share of the Johnson Creek dam out of both altruism and investment savvy. The cranberry farmers who first conceived the dam were short of the expected $9 million to $12 million the dam would cost.

“Water’s the new resource everybody wants,” Keiser said.

But the dam isn’t what everybody wants, especially if your name is Scott Cook, who fishes commercially and has a stake in the land that would be flooded by the dam.

“You flood our land, and you remove any chance of restoring coho to Johnson Creek,” he says.

As dams go, the one planned to impound Johnson Creek is moderate in scope — about 90 feet high holding back 1,500 acre feet of water. By comparison, Detroit Reservoir east of Salem holds 300 times as much.

And though the dam on Johnson Creek isn’t a done deal — its most urgent need is a waiver from the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to block migratory fish passage — supporters say it has a good chance of succeeding. “You can lose your whole crop without enough water,” said Ron Kasper, project manager for the Bandon Cranberry Water Control District. “This is the only option we have so far.”

Of the 165 cranberry farmers in the area, about 20 percent would benefit from the new dam.

As would the entire town of Bandon, Winkel said.

“If Johnson Creek reservoir doesn’t work, we will have to look at other resources, but they are few,” Winkel said.

Cook — who appears to be the lone man standing against the dam — said it is counterproductive to the needs of coastal residents. Hit by years of bad fishing, commercial trollers such as Cook want to see the salmon return to streams such as Johnson Creek.

A good stretch of spawning ground on Johnson Creek is on the land owned by his girlfriend, Elizabeth French, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

French declined to comment for this story. She said Cook speaks on her behalf.

Cook wants to see two small impoundment dams used by farmers on Johnson Creek removed. That would allow coho salmon to run once again. A dam would kill any chance of that, he said.

Further, Cook and French have planned for years to build a home on the land that would be flooded by the dam.

“We would like to start building right now,” Cook said. “But we’re afraid to do anything.”

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