Residents will ‘take back control,’ buy and reopen a closed golf course that once hosted PGA Skins Game

LA QUINTA, Calif. — After years of bankruptcy proceedings for a previous owner left the future of their golf course in flux, homeowners from the Trilogy community area have overwhelmingly voted in favor of purchasing the 229-acre course and an adjoining restaurant.

Residents from the Trilogy at La Quinta Maintenance Association supported the roughly $6.17 million purchase — plus costs for course upgrades and other facility renovations — during its latest membership meeting, with roughly 88 percent of those who voted backing the move, according to results released Monday.

The vote brings an end to a period of uncertainty brought by lengthy court proceedings for the course’s previous owner. Operating as the Coral Mountain Golf Club, the course had been closed since September 2022, when parts of it were subject to foreclosure proceedings, while the restaurant was shuttered the same year.

“It’s just in extremely rough shape, barely looks like a golf course, and we’re looking forward to getting back into the kind of condition that it was in when the Skins game was hosted here,” Mark Reider, president of the TLQMA board of directors, said in an interview.

Now, with plans to reopen later this year, the course will get a second life under its previous name, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, as it was known when it was the site of the annual PGA Skins Game from 2003 to 2006, which featured the likes of golf legends Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

The golf course at Trilogy has been snared in legal troubles in recent years. The property has multiple owners and parts of it, linked to a man named Thomas Brown, have been involved in bankruptcy and foreclosure proceedings since 2020, according to public records.

In 2015, Brown partnered with an investor named Richard Cushman to purchase the Coral Mountain Golf Club and operate it under a newly formed company called CBGM Inc. But some transactions, including Brown taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans against the parcel surrounding the course’s first hole, were disputed by Cushman, leading to a protracted legal battle. A bankruptcy case for CBGM Inc. concluded in late 2023.

Another company registered to Brown, TTBGM Inc., owned the course’s Bistro 60 restaurant, the “cart barn” and a parking lot. It filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2020, kicking off years of legal wrangling around the disposal of the company’s assets to satisfy its creditors, including the property’s largest creditor — Byline Bank, which loaned $4.9 million against the property in 2017. The company was also delinquent on its Trilogy property’s taxes to Riverside County for multiple years.

The legal fate of the TTBGM property reached a resolution in late 2023, with a judge ordering the bankruptcy trustee assigned to the case to sell the land to Trilogy at La Quinta Maintenance Association.

Despite the complicated legal situation, the Coral Mountain Golf Course remained in operation and open to the public until September 2022, with CBGM, owner of hole Nos. 2 through 18, operating the course, as well the facilities included in TTBGM’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Reider, the board president, told The Desert Sun that the community decided to pursue the purchase in the spring of 2023, after the facilities were shuttered the year before.

“We decided at that point in time that it was time to go forward and see if we could acquire all the pieces and take back control of our own destiny,” Reider said.

The homeowners’ group hired a legal team to help them sort through the bankruptcy proceedings and negotiate purchase prices with the trustees assigned to the bankruptcy cases.

The board also interviewed several golf course operators as part of its move, eventually choosing BlueStar Resort and Golf — the operator of the course under its original ownership, Shea Homes. Reider noted the community held about 20 town halls and Q&As to discuss the transaction, thanking the volunteers who helped organize a vote among the 1,238 homeowners.

“We felt BlueStar was going to be able to restore (the golf course) the best way and bring back what they had, and also do some other things here within the community as well,” Reider said.

The TLQMA board members are aiming to have the renovated course and restaurant open in November, though Reider said they still need to get some building permits from the city and handle some other logistics. The land purchase and renovations will be paid through HOA fees, as well as a special assessment for some maintenance costs.

Overall, Reider said the community was as united as it’s been in his 14 years living there, adding they’re particularly excited after dealing with the uncertainty of the last few years.

“It’s still a very playable, enjoyable course, and (we’re) looking forward to having both people in our community being able to play here, as well as people from the surrounding areas or folks that are coming in from out of town on a golf trip,” Reider said.