CARRABASSETT VALLEY – Voters here will decide Thursday if the town should finance a new golf course clubhouse.

The town owns the famed Sugarloaf Golf Club, a legendary 18-hole course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. that has been ranked No. 1 in the state for the past 17 years.

Sugarloaf Mountain Corp. leases the course from the town. The lease isn’t up for 23 more years, said Town Manager David Cota.

At the town office polls, which are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., voters will be asked to appropriate up to $800,000 to pay for construction of the clubhouse, financing the project by borrowing the money for 20 years.

The $800,000 loan and interest on it will be split with the town paying 62.5 percent of it and Sugarloaf Mountain Corp. paying the remaining 37.5 percent. The deal will require an amended golf course lease.

With interest estimated at a maximum rate of 4.47 percent, the loan would cost $328,408. Added to the $800,000 principal, debt service would total $1,128,408.

Cota said the town’s golf course lease partnership with the mountain corporation has always been good. SMC paid 66 percent of the town’s original investment in building the golf course and is paying the entire debt for a recent $800,000 capital improvement project.

The town would own the clubhouse, designed as a 5,500-square-foot facility with a pro shop, bathrooms, locker area, kitchen, dining room and lounge, porch and an outdoor patio. The dining room and lounge are designed to hold 60 people. Another 40 could be accommodated in the patio and porch areas.

The project would include a putting green, kitchen equipment and furnishings, all the responsibility of SMC.

Selectmen back the project, Cota said, because they see it as part of a bigger picture to improve recreation facilities in Carrabassett Valley.

“Recreation is our lifeblood here. It’s our industrial park. It’s our economic development,” Cota said. “It’s who we are.”

If financing is approved, the project would go out to bid this winter, site work would start in the spring, construction would be done over the summer and the clubhouse would be finished in the fall, according to Cota.

Special town meeting

An hour after polls close on that issue, a special town meeting will open at the Touring Center.

There, voters will be asked to decide on three more articles related to recreation improvements.

One asks voters to authorize selectmen to accept $22,500 the town was awarded last month from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to build a playground and improve the Town Park basketball court.

Another recommends that townspeople appropriate that $22,500 and up to $18,000 more as the town’s share of the $63,000 playground and park project.

Cota said the recreation fund has $460,000 in it and the playground fund has $18,000 so approval would not raise taxes.

The final article recommends that voters spend $105,000 in state and town funds to build a quarter-mile-long by-pass trail from the Narrow Gauge Pathway around the residential area of Bigelow Station to Route 27.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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