Two top executives connected to the Sagebrush Golf and Country Club announced they were severing their relationship with the Newmark Group, a real estate and development company which bought the golf course near Nicola Lake in 2015.
Scott Masse, hired as the general manager for Sagebrush, and James Cronk, formerly the president of Newmark’s golf division, made the announcement in an email on Friday afternoon.
“Due to recent events and circumstances beyond our control, we have immediataly [sic] ceased providing consulting and management services to Sagebrush Golf Club and Newmark,” read the extremely brief press release.
When pressed by the Herald, Masse and Cronk declined to comment further on the matter.
But there was ample reason to speculate about the nature of the “recent events and circumstances” referenced in the release. Earlier on Sept. 8, Mark Chandler — director and owner of the Newmark Group — was slated to appear in court facing extradition to the United States for a “fraudulent scheme” he was alleged to have run back in 2009. Court documents reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had run a special investigation into Chandler’s real estate dealings in Los Angeles, where it was alleged that Chandler had misrepresented his finances to secure more backing for his real estate developments.
Chandler’s company is also named in a swath of other civil suits in B.C., many of which are related to a Newmark-owned condo-development in Langley. The 93-unit project was supposed to have been complete more than a year and a half ago — but tenants have yet to move in to the units.
The Sagebrush course was initially slated to be open in the spring of 2016. Cronk, then-president of the Newmark Golf Group, said that more construction was necessary before the course could be opened to the public.
In the spring of 2017, with no timeline in place for opening the course, Masse offered this statement in an email to the Herald:
“The past several months have been spent diving deeper into the project and given us time to better understand all that Sagebrush has to offer, and as a result we continue working towards our goal of elevating Sagebrush to the quality golf and lake resort community experience that we are striving for.”
The course remains closed.
