Breathing life back into Whispering Oaks
RIDGE MANOR –
Bob and Carol Armstrong moved to Whispering Oaks for the serenity and beauty – not for the snakes and critters.
They hated the unsightly image of six-foot-tall weeds, which emerged when the golf course closed down.
Not only did the unwelcome stalks block their view of the neighborhood, it was a challenge keeping them out of their own yard.
Now most of those stalks are gone and the snakes have slithered away to find tall grass elsewhere. The once-pristine course is looking more like it did two years ago thanks to the Armstrongs, a senior pro golfer and others in the surrounding community.
Their work, they said, is not yet done.
“We’re reaching out,” said Bob Armstrong. “We still need another 70 (lifetime) members to build the pool and fitness center.”
By Christmas 2007, hundreds of acres of green grass and oak trees transformed into a marshy, unkempt wasteland – a haven for reptiles and rodents and no longer an alluring neighborhood for those seeking a tranquil life.
“I just wanted to move,” said Carol Armstrong, a Dade City native who lived for years in Pittsburgh with her husband. “To see all those weeds growing behind my house was more than I could handle.”
The couple moved to the Ridge Manor community in the 1990s – not long after buying a villa for Armstrong’s mother in the same neighborhood. They had looked at other places to live – from Lakeland to Daytona Beach – and settled on the quietness and convenience of Whispering Oaks.
Armstrong’s husband is an avid golfer. His dream was to live and retire along a golf course. He didn’t want to move. His wife understood and stood by his side. She also looked for ways to help.
She has decorated the clubhouse and actively recruited social lifetime members, whose fees are critical to opening the 18-hole facility – which has been renamed the Ridge Manor Oaks Country Club, she said.
Already she has noticed a difference in the neighborhood.
“There aren’t as many outsiders,” she said. “There aren’t those people who drive through the neighborhood who don’t belong here.”
Bob Carson is the senior pro who has put up the money, cut the grass and landscaped the greens.
“It was 92 degrees,” Carson said plainly, emphasizing the amount of labor that had to be done in difficult conditions during the summer months. “On the greens we had to take some of the stuff off by hand.”
He had four crew members assist him, along with Bob Armstrong. The latter’s wife focused on the interior of the clubhouse.
Roughly $300,000 worth of landscaping tools were used during the project, which got under way earlier in the summer.
Carol Armstrong called Carson the “hardest working man” she’s ever met. He would cut grass, chop weeds and haul debris “from sun up to sun down.” He slaved away to the point of extreme exhaustion.
“You could talk to him and in the middle of the conversation he’d fall asleep,” joked Armstrong.
He playfully rebuked her, but confessed only a few seconds later.
“It’s true,” he said smiling and nodding.
Carson said he first was interested in buying the course eight years ago, but he didn’t reach an agreement. It was earlier this year he heard from a Realtor in Ocala that it was up for sale.
He jumped at the chance, but finding investors willing to assist him was a challenge, he said.
Bob Armstrong was having the same difficulty finding a way to save his neighborhood. The two parties met in June and it all started to come together, he said.
“If the homeowners weren’t interested, I wouldn’t have done it,” said Carson.
Armstrong, his wife and others in the neighborhood were told June 24 they needed to raise $100,000 in six days. By the end of those six days, they had $82,000, all from local residents who had paid for social lifetime memberships. They might have fallen short, but Carson and his business partner were swayed.
“They never thought we’d be able to do it,” Armstrong said. “They were amazed.”
The course itself has character and variety. The golfers in the neighborhood had missed it.
The front nine is tight, most of it squeezed in between two rows of houses along either side, Armstrong said. The back nine is more of a dune-styled course and more open and scenic.
The previous owners, Jason and Jill Hofius, slipped behind in their taxes, went broke and returned home to Indiana, residents said.
Not long afterward, the pool got murky and the greens turned brown. The abandoned clubhouse – which included a kitchen, dining area and pro shop – became a target for burglars and vandals, Armstrong said.
John Rolfingsmeyer, vice president of the Whispering Oaks Estates Homeowners’ Association, dropped a thick scrap book on the table and flipped through the more than 100 photographs he took of the course before Carson and his crew went to work.
He pressed his index finger against one in particular that included weeds growing along the side of the clubhouse. It covered the side of the building like the ivy at Wrigley Field.
“You could stand over there at that oak tree and you couldn’t even see the clubhouse over all the weeds,” Rolfingsmeyer said as he pointed out the window at a tree 50 yards away.
The property value of his home plummeted along with the others.
It was a major cause of frustration for Bill Smith, president of the association, who also missed his rounds of golf.
He lives along the 10th fairway.
“I look forward to playing there again,” he said. “It was fun.”
He thought Jason Hofius was a dogmatic owner, but he didn’t argue against his choices. Smith was a member, but Hofius was the owner and he had a right to run his business the way he wanted, he thought.
When it went south, Smith felt badly for him and his wife.
“It was a lifelong dream for that young couple to own a golf course,” said Smith, who was decidedly sympathetic. “It was sad to see them lose it.”
The Armstrongs are still leading the charge toward recruiting more lifetime members. They have 126 total and they are seeking more than 200.
Lifetime memberships are being offered for $700 until Oct. 1. After that, it will be $1,000.
Those select members receive 10 percent discounts at the restaurant and pro shop and all access to the golf course, pool and fitness center.
Ridge Manor Oaks will be semi-private, which means there will be monthly memberships as well as public access, Carson said.
He hopes to open it for business by Oct. 15.
Carol Armstrong said the area was once a “wretched mess” and is now reminiscent of what she and her husband enjoyed when they first moved to the area from Pittsburgh. She realized then it was a real estate “goldmine” and she is starting to see some signs of a comeback.
“I’ve already seen the value of my own home go up just in the last two months,” she said.
Reporter Tony Holt can be reached at 352-544-5283 or [email protected].
