The Oahu, Hawaii club owes between $5,000 and $8,500 each to more than 100 former members seeking refunds after they resigned. “To date we have been unable to recruit new members to allow us to redeem outstanding certificates in a timely manner,” the club responded, offering a golf-for-debt exchange that none of the former members have accepted.
Moanalua Golf Club in Oahu, Hawaii has owed more than 100 of its former members hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds for years, the Honolulu-based Hawaii News Now reported.
“They have to pay me back the membership money,” said Thomas Chung, 77, who told Hawaii News Now he resigned from the club more than seven years ago and still is owed $5,000 from the club, half of his original initiation fee payment.
Chung learned that he’s the 91st former member on the list waiting for a refund, meaning the club could owe its retired members at least $455,000. Club President Calvin Miyamoto told Hawaii News Now more than 100 of the club’s former members are owed refunds of $5,000 or $8,500.
“We understand how each former member feels,” Miyamoto said. “All of the clubs are suffering right now. We just can’t get new members with the hard economic times. We’ve looked at different ways to pay people back. It will take a vote by all the members to have this taken care of.”
The club told Chung he was 100 on the list in early 2007, just after he resigned from the club, meaning he progressed just nine spots in more than seven years toward reimbursement, Now reported.
Earlier this month, Archie Viela, the club’s membership chairman, sent Chung’s daughter an email that said: “Pursuant to our bylaws, former members are paid in the order they appear on that list when a new member joins the club and pays the certificate fee for the class of membership he selects.”
“To date we have been unable to recruit new members to allow us to redeem outstanding certificates in a timely manner,” Viela wrote. “Until and unless we are able to recruit new members, we cannot redeem outstanding certificates.”
In May of last year, the golf club wrote Chung a letter “to investigate if there is any interest from ‘certificate holders’ to convert portions of their certificate fees into fee play cards redeemable at our course.” The golf coupons would be valued at roughly $50 each that could be used to play golf and rent a cart at Moanalua. Chung said he was not interested, Now reported.
Miyamoto, who took over as president in July, said no former members were interested in the golf-for-debt proposal, Now reported.
Moanalua, which has about 302 members, has dropped its initiation fee to $1,000, from $10,000 20 years ago, Miyamoto said. In spite of that lower initial fee, he said he could not remember when the last new member joined the club. There are a lot of “temporary members,” but they don’t bring in significant funds to help erase the backlog, he told Hawaii News Now.
“My main concern is how to keep the club going,” Miyamoto said. “We are exploring all avenue of what we can do.”
The club was built back in 1898, and its 9-hole golf course is the oldest in the state. Last year, the club explored an offer from Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, whose hospital is located next to the golf course, Now reported.
Kaiser offered to pay the club $4 million for 10 acres of its land for an eventual hospital expansion. A Kaiser spokeswoman said hospital officials briefed the club’s Board and it is still awaiting a response, Now reported.
The club is doing its due diligence on the Kaiser offer, Miyamoto said, figuring out tax consequences and how much golf course property would be lost. Club leaders have yet to put the Kaiser offer to the membership for a vote, he told Hawaii News Now.
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