Trilogy golf course in La Quinta to reopen after bankruptcy, renovation

The golf course at the Trilogy community in La Quinta is set to reopen under new ownership in November after being closed for more than two years.

The move would end a saga that began when the bankruptcy of the previous owner left the course’s future in flux.

Leaders from the Trilogy at La Quinta Maintenance Association announced the reopening last week, several months after homeowners from the community overwhelmingly voted in favor of purchasing the 229-acre course and an adjoining restaurant for roughly $6.17 million. They spent more on course upgrades and other facility renovations.

The homeowners are bringing back the original management team from BlueStar Resort & Golf to oversee the renovation and manage the club, and the course will be available to play at a daily fee. Operating as the Coral Mountain Golf Club, the course has been closed since September 2022, when parts of it were subject to foreclosure proceedings, while the restaurant was shuttered the same year.

Now, the course will get a second life under its previous name, Trilogy Golf Club at La Quinta, as it was known when it was the site of the annual PGA Skins Game from 2003 to 2006, which featured the likes of golf legends Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

“The course has great bones. You can see all the characteristics that made it one of the best in the region,” Mark Reider, president of the homeowners’ association’s board of directors, said in a prepared statement. “It has a tremendous setting and a very playable, enjoyable design. It just wasn’t cared for properly for a very long time.”

“Now, crews are out there every day putting it back the way it should be,” Reider added. “We’ve got a great team on this, and we can’t wait for our community and people from the surrounding area to be able to enjoy this golf course the way it was when it hosted The Skins Game.”

The reopening will bring an end to a period of uncertainty brought by lengthy court proceedings for the course’s previous owner. Operating as the Coral Mountain Golf Club, the course had been closed since September 2022, when parts of it were subject to foreclosure proceedings, while the restaurant was shuttered the same year.

As part of the renovation, all greens have been “re-grassed,” and the collars have been resodded. The irrigation heads and pump station were also replaced. Several bunkers have been reshaped with lowered bunker noses to enhance playability, and all bunkers have been completely rebuilt with new drainage and new liners.

The Trilogy Golf Club will also make the original “Skins tees” available for play, allowing players to experience the course as Woods, Mickelson and Fred Couples did during its heyday.

Along with the golf course work, the club is renovating the clubhouse, which includes a full-service golf shop and a restaurant that will offer “quality classic fare with inventive touches and craft cocktails and beverages,” according to a release from the residents’ association.

More: Trilogy residents will ‘take back control,’ buy and reopen closed La Quinta golf course

How we got here

The golf course at Trilogy has been snared in legal troubles in recent years. The property had multiple owners and parts of it, linked to a man named Thomas Brown, have been involved in bankruptcy and foreclosure proceedings since 2020, according to public records.

In 2015, Brown partnered with an investor named Richard Cushman to purchase the Coral Mountain Golf Club and operate it under a newly formed company called CBGM Inc. But some transactions, including Brown taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans against the parcel surrounding the course’s first hole, were disputed by Cushman, leading to a protracted legal battle. A bankruptcy case for CBGM Inc. concluded in late 2023.

Another company registered to Brown, TTBGM Inc., owned the course’s Bistro 60 restaurant, the “cart barn” and a parking lot at 60151 Trilogy Parkway. It filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2020, kicking off years of legal wrangling around the disposal of the company’s assets to satisfy its creditors, including the property’s largest creditor — Byline Bank, which loaned $4.9 million against the property in 2017. The company was also delinquent on its Trilogy property’s taxes to Riverside County for multiple years.

The legal fate of the TTBGM property reached a resolution in late 2023, with a judge ordering the bankruptcy trustee assigned to the case to sell the land to Trilogy at La Quinta Maintenance Association.

Tom Coulter covers the cities of Palm Desert, La Quinta, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells. Reach him at thomas.coulter@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Trilogy golf course in La Quinta to reopen after bankruptcy, renovation