Ewa golf course
sold for $38.3 mil

The sale is a sign of renewed activity
among foreign owners of
local golf courses

By Rick Daysog
Star-Bulletin

A Japan-based golf course operator has acquired the former Ewa Beach International Golf Club for $38.3 million.

Honolulu Kosaido Inc., the local unit of Tokyo-based Kosaido Development Co., purchased the 18-hole, 135-acre course from Japan-based Sogo Hawaii Inc. on April 30.

The golf course has been renamed the New Ewa Beach Golf Club, said Ikuyo Symonds, the club's new manager. Symonds said the buyers have retained about 40 of the golf club's 66 employees. Opened in 1992, the course is between Fort Weaver and North roads.

According to Symonds, Kosaido Development, has extensive golf holdings worldwide, including six golf courses in Japan, two in Paris, as well as courses in Scotland, London, Dusseldorf and Beijing.

The company also owns golf courses in Bali and Sydney, two in San Francisco and one in Chicago.

Kosaido Development is affiliated with a large Tokyo-based printer, Kosaido Printing Co., which is headed by Yoshiaki Sakurai, its chairman. Sakurai founded Kosaido Printing in the 1950s and is taking the company public, Symonds said.

The sale of Ewa Beach International is the latest sign of foreign investors' interest in local golf courses.

Last month, Coral Creek Golf Inc., backed by unnamed foreign investors, acquired the yet-to-be completed Ewa by Gentry golf course from Gentry Homes Ltd.

The Koolau Golf Course in Windward Oahu is the subject of foreclosure proceedings by the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd. and will be sold in a foreclosure auction. The course has received substantial interest from mainland and Asian investors, sources say.

"There has been interest all along in the local golf courses but it's just that now some of these foreign interests are willing to trade (the courses)," said Bob Hastings, president of Hastings Conboy Braig & Associates Ltd., a local real estate appraisal firm.

Hastings said many Hawaii golf courses aren't making a great deal of money. He noted that some of the Japanese lenders who financed local golf course construction during the boom years of the late 1980s and early 1990s are under pressure now to clean up troubled loans.