Jarod Opperman / The Bulletin Golfers prepare to putt on the ninth green at Juniper Golf Course this summer. The Redmond City Council on Tuesday night approved a new contract to let CourseCo continue to run Juniper. Among the conditions the company accepted is to promise to contribute $100,000 to capital improvements at the course.

REDMOND — When Juniper Golf Course moved from north of the Redmond Airport to south of the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center in 2005, it instantly became one of the premier municipal courses in the Pacific Northwest — and a massive money pit for city of Redmond taxpayers.

“We need to be creative about how we use that facility,” Redmond Finance Director Jason Neff said about Juniper, the golf course that is costing the city approximately $405,000 a year in debt payments alone. “It’s primary use — golf — is decreasing nationwide.”

In 2003, the golf course took out a $5.93 million construction loan — which was backed by the city — to relocate from its old site to its current spot near the fairgrounds. Juniper’s original home was on land owned by the Redmond Airport, which the airfield leased to the golf course for $1 a year. Federal Aviation Administration laws, though, require airports to charge fair-market rates for their lands, meaning Juniper was looking at a rent increase of approximately $300,000 when its contract with the airport expired in 2006.

Instead — with the unanimous backing of the 2003 Redmond City Council — the course moved to its current site on land donated by the city and the Bureau of Land Management. Juniper also took out a second city-backed loan in 2006 for another $800,000 to finish construction work on the new course.

The new and improved Juniper, which opened July 2, 2005, was longer, sleeker and more modern, immediately making its way onto several “best of” lists from Golf Digest and Golfweek Magazine.

But the course was more expensive to play, too.

Membership costs, which were about $100 a month at the old course, jumped by about 50 percent. Currently, individual memberships are $190 a month with family memberships costing $230 a month.

Within the first two years of the move, according to a city-commissioned study done by the National Golf Foundation, full memberships dropped from about 430 to 200. The study also found nonmembers rarely returned, in part because of slow play and high green fees. Just four years after relocating, Juniper began to struggle to make its nearly $40,000-a-month debt payments to the city.

The course dipped into its reserves for most of 2009 before missing its December payment that year. Since 2010, the city has made all the golf course’s debt payments, which right now equals about $34,000 a month or $405,000 a year. According to Neff, Juniper still owes $4.5 million on its original construction note, which will run until 2033. The course’s smaller loan, for which it now owes $470,000, will be paid off in 2026.

Even with the city picking up what is essentially the golf course’s mortgage, Juniper has lost money the last two years. CourseCo, which manages golf courses in Oregon, California, Washington and Texas, signed a five-year deal with the city in 2010 to run Juniper. The California-based company kept Juniper in the black for two of its first three years managing the golf course and even contributed to part of the course’s loan payments. The city has had to contribute money to Juniper’s operating costs the past two fiscal years, though, as rounds and memberships are down.

“There’s going to be good years and bad years, but I think we should have positive cash flow (not including debt payments) about 75 percent of the time,” Neff said about the golf course’s yearly operation expectations. “They’re not wasting money out there. … What we need is more revenue generators. More public play. More members. And more events not related to golf.”

Annie McVay, Redmond’s parks and administration division manager, says the challenge is to get folks in the community to think of Juniper as more than just a golf course.

“It’s a community asset,” said McVay, who Friday helped stage a block party and barbecue at the facility. “We’re doing events like the block party, and we had fireworks viewing on the Fourth of July. … I’d love to do a disc golf tournament. They started hosting weddings a couple of years ago and recently they did their first quinceanera.”

“It’s a great golf course,” added Neff, himself a golfer. “It’s a great value and a great public course. What we’d like to see more of, in addition to new members, is when the visitor from Seattle comes to town and golfs Tetherow one day and Pronghorn the next, he spends a third day at Juniper.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, beastes@bendbulletin.com