Clontarf Golf Club's 670 members will be paid €100,000 each after voting last night to sell the course to Capel Developments.
If the deal goes through, it will be the first of its kind where individual members will be paid directly for the sale of a golf club's land. Capel's offer included a commitment to pay all full members €100,000, conditional on the sale going through.
At a meeting in Dublin, 488 of the 537 members who attended voted for a motion to sell the club's 77 acres to Capel Developments in a deal worth €125 million. The majority was well above the two-thirds needed to pass the proposal.
The vote means that Capel's offer trumps a more recent bid by rival Manor Park Homes which offered members €125,000 each.
Both developers offered deals that included direct payments to members, a €20 million lump sum to the club and alternative courses and facilities.
Capel offered the Bernhard Langer-designed links course at Portmarnock in north Dublin. Manor Park offered a new course and club house that would have been built on ex-taoiseach Charles Haughey's former Kinsealy estate at Abbe-ville, close to Malahide.
Members last night said that they felt the Manor Park offer came too late. A number objected to the fact that they first heard about it through the media. They were also wary of a term that would have allowed the company to build 47 homes around the course. On this basis, members said they preferred Portmarnock.
The deal is complicated by the fact that Clontarf leases 62 of its 77 acres from Dublin City Council. The terms require that the land only be used as a golf course. The sale also depends on the land being rezoned for residential building. This cannot happen before the city's next development plan is drawn up in 2011. A number of councillors had voiced objections to the proposed sale and redevelopment.
Clontarf's property is attractive to developers as it is located within three miles of the city centre. Crumlin-based Capel is backed by developers Eddie Keegan, John O'Connor and Liam Kelly. Joe Moran and industrial holdings company, DCC, jointly own Manor Park.
