SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Hanafil Golf & Tour Inc., a Korean-Filipino company that recently won the contract to operate the 18-hole golf course here, announced on Tuesday the $48-million redevelopment of the Subic Bay Golf and Country Club into an all-weather championship course and a full-blown country club.

Hanafil president and chief executive officer Benjamin John Defensor said the multimillion-dollar development project includes the setting up additional nine holes, construction of a hotel with casino,  as well as some villas, and the improvement of the driving range, among others.

“We’re aiming for a full-blown country-club concept,” Defensor said in a press briefing here. “The fairways would have to be reconstructed from scratch, and some of the holes would have to be relocated.”

Defensor said the new amenities will be completed in six years, with the design of the course to be undertaken by a topnotch golf course architect.

Hanafil, Defensor added, is planning to engage the services of either Arnold Palmer or Robert Trent Jones II.

Palmer is known for designing courses like those at the Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Florida; the Classic Club in Palm Desert, California; and the Four Seasons Resort in Liberia, Costa Rica, while Jones’s masterpieces include the Spanish Bay Links in Pebble Beach, California; the Prince Course in Kauai, Hawaii; and the Cabo Real Campo de Golf in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Defensor said, however, that the redevelopment would have to be phased because club members had requested that the existing 18 holes be kept open while additional holes are being constructed.

Meanwhile, Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Administrator Armand Arreza said in the same forum that Hanafil’s golf course project will complement two other golf resorts being planned in the Subic Bay Freeport.

He said the SBMA has recently approved a 400-hectare site at Cawag in Subic’s Redondo Peninsula for a golf course and resort project by Subic Neocove Corp., another Korean company, while a third golf facility will be established at the Morong area, which is being eyed as a resort and convention complex.

The three golf courses will be located in such a way that they won’t compete with each other, but instead ensure adequate facilities for the growing number of golf enthusiasts and visiting professional players, Arreza said.

The SBMA recently awarded the operation of the Subic Bay golf course to Hanafil in a public bidding after the agency took over the operation of the facility last year.

SBMA officials said the takeover was prompted by the failure of the previous operator, the Universal International Group (UIG), to settle debts that have ballooned to $150 million and to honor its development commitments under its lease agreement.

UIG’s development commitments spelled out in its 1995 lease development agreement with the SBMA included the construction of a new, first-class clubhouse, a 100-room condominium, 30 VIP villas, and a five-star hotel and resort prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit meeting in Subic in November 1996.

Because of UIG’s unpaid rentals and unfulfilled commitments, the SBMA first took over the facility in 1997—a move that the Supreme Court has affirmed in a 2000 order, but later signed a compromise agreement with the firm.

In June last year the SBMA again took over the management of the Subic golf course due to the same problems.

Lawyer Von Rodriguez, officer in charge of the SBMA legal department, said the Regional Trial Court in Olongapo City has affirmed the validity of the SBMA’s 2007 takeover.

After its takeover, the SBMA said it retained the services of UIG’s 70 workers to maintain the facility.

The original workers continue to serve with Hanafil until now. Defensor said the present operator would employ more local workers upon the start of construction and redevelopment activities at the Subic golf course.

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