The owners of Bend’s Broken Top Golf Club are selling it to its members.

A total of 143 of the club’s existing 300 golf members opted last month to put up $50,000 apiece to start the sale process, Broken Top Partners LLC spokesman Don Bauhofer said Tuesday.

Another 14 ”social members,” who don’t have golf privileges but can use the club’s other facilities, paid $16,700 apiece for ownership shares.

The sale won’t be complete until another 157 golf buyers buy in, according to a sales plan Bauhofer distributed to current club members in June. But when that happens, the club’s ownership will transfer fully to its members, averting an alternative option that was also outlined in Bauhofer’s offer – opening the course to partial public play.

The club has been run by developers since the Broken Top community opened in 1993, first by original Broken Top developer Joseph Weston and then by Bauhofer and the Broken Top Partners, who paid $9.2 million for it last year.

Gaining control of the course’s future seemed to be a big part of the members’ motivation to buy shares, Bauhofer said.

As with most private golf courses, Broken Top’s club is a consistent money-loser, making it a drag on any independent owner’s finances, but members consider it a valuable asset that needs to be maintained and improved.

”This was a member-born idea,” Bauhofer said. ”The membership is, by and large, excited about owning their own golf club, and not having it owned by a developer who they can’t control, and whose future plans they can’t control.”

Some members agree.

Jack Matthews, who moved to Broken Top a year ago, said he didn’t opt to upgrade his social membership to equity status, ”but from what I can detect, the mood is really high about going to this equity ownership thing. There seems to be an optimism and I think it’s going to have a ripple effect not only on the golf course, but on the Broken Top community at large.”

Broken Top Partners will continue to own and run the golf course, along with its restaurant and clubhouse, until the 300th golf buyer signs on, according to the offer. At that point, ownership will be turned over to a nonprofit company owned by the members, and a board of directors will be elected to manage it.

The plan gives Bauhofer’s group 10 years to locate the 300th buyer.

Bauhofer said he expects the additional 157 buyers to come from outside the existing membership pool. Since the initial offering period ended on July 14, the price has gone up to $55,000 per share.

Existing members who opted not to become part of the purchasing group will be able to maintain their memberships with all of their existing privileges, Bauhofer said. But those memberships will gradually be retired as they are sold back to the club, and only equity memberships will be offered going forward.

The club’s total golf memberships will remain capped at 395, according to the plan. Broken Top Partners will continue to cover the course’s operating deficits until the ownership is transferred.

Existing members paid from $11,000 to $32,000 for their memberships over the club’s 13-year history, Bauhofer said. According to the terms of the sales offer, members who bought ownership shares during the initial offering period, which ended July 21, got credit for their initial membership purchase prices.

Existing members who opt to buy ownership shares from now on will have to pay the full $55,000, although they will still have the right to sell their old memberships back to the club, minus transfer fees.

The golf course and its restaurant are the centerpiece of one of the city’s oldest gated communities.

The restaurant, originally open to the public, was limited to members only in early 2004.

Play on the golf course has always been limited to the club’s members. Sales of golf memberships were originally limited to residents of the Broken Top community, but the club opened membership sales to nonresidents in 2004.

The members who opted to buy diverted the club from a future that might have brought significant changes.

In an e-mail sent to members in June, Bauhofer said the club would reduce its membership fees to $15,000 ”and aggressively market for new members at that price” if the sales offer failed to attract at least 100 buyers by July 15 – a deadline that was later extended to July 21.

The alternative plan also would have opened the club for ”more outside play and non-member events in order to bring more revenue to the club.”

Since the requisite number of buyers signed up in time, that option is now dead, Bauhofer said Tuesday.

Three hundred ownership fees at the prices quoted in the club’s sales offer would amount to about $15.75 million. But the ownership group has agreed to sink $3 million of that back into the golf course, Bauhofer said.

Including the purchase discounts given to the first 143 buyers, and the expense of covering the course’s deficits and other costs of ownership until the sale is complete, Bauhofer said his group is budgeted to lose around $3 million on the deal.

Bauhofer said selling the club to Broken Top Partners was a condition Weston set when he sold the partners 119 buildable lots that they needed to put together their new development, Cascade Highlands. In other words, if the partners wanted the lots to build their new resort community, they had to take the old golf club, and all its headaches, with them.

”We bought the club because we’re developers,” Bauhofer said. ”Not because we want to run a private golf course.”