Retirement Systems of Alabama CEO David Bronner said Tuesday the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is having its best year since it opened more than three decades ago and is on track to make $15 million or more in profit.
At the quarterly meeting of the Employees’ Retirement System Board of Control, Bronner, who has led the RSA for more than 50 years, said business on the RTJ Golf Trail has continued to rise since the COVID pandemic began to subside three years ago.
The RSA’s most recent annual report says golfers played 688,477 rounds at the RTJ’s 11 sites in 2023, a 12% increase over a record set in 2022.
Also on Tuesday, the ERS Board heard a presentation from the company that manages the RSA’s eight resort hotels in Alabama. Executives with PCH Hotel & Resorts, said the hotels maintained a rise in revenue that started after the pandemic and will exceed last year’s record revenue of $235 million.
The numbers are important because the golf courses and hotels are components in the assets the Retirement Systems of Alabama maintains to support pension funds for about 400,000 active and retired members of the Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System, and the Judicial Retirement Fund.
The TRS fund, with about 250,000 state and local education employees and retirees, has assets valued at about $31 billion. The ERS fund, with about 145,000 state and local government employees and retirees, has assets with a market value of about $16 billion.
Stocks make up more than 60% of both funds.
Bronner gave the board a brief recap of the genesis of the RTJ, which opened in 1992. He said some of his critics were probably right in believing the idea made no sense. But he said he believes the goals - to attract tourists, help recruit industry, and improve how those outside Alabama viewed the state - are being achieved.
“I wanted to do something for Alabama to try to change it from head to toe,” Bronner said. “Basically, the people that didn’t like me 25 and 30 years ago were correct. It was a crazy idea. Why would you ever do something like that? It was really to change the image of the state if I could, a little bit anyway, on the positive side.”
The RTJ Trail sites are Cambrian Ridge in Greenville, Capitol Hill in Prattville, Grand National in Auburn/Opelika, Hampton Cove in Huntsville, Highland Oaks in Dothan, Lakewood Club in Point Clear, Magnolia Grove in Mobile, Oxmoor Valley in Birmingham, Ross Bridge in Hoover, Silver Lakes, between Anniston and Gadsden, and The Shoals in Muscle Shoals.
Bronner said golf as a stand-alone activity is not generally a money-maker. He said profits were even less likely at some of the trail sites in smaller towns, like in Greenville and at Silver Lakes. But he said the trail concept would not have worked if it was limited to the state’s largest cities.
“You can’t have a trail by saying, ‘Hey, we have a trail, the first stop is Huntsville, the second stop is Birmingham, and, oh, by the way, the third stop is Mobile,’” Bronner said. “That’s not much of a trail. So we had to develop things in-between.”
The idea, Bronner, said, was to attract tourists with money to spend at hotels and restaurants. The trail sites have helped recruit industry, including automakers Honda and Hyundai, he said. He recalled providing an executive with Hyundai an endless supply of golf balls to hit off a tee with a water hazard at the Capitol Hill course in Prattville.
Bronner said the RSA’s ownership of newspapers, a billboard company, and especially television stations have helped with the advertising essential to letting the world know about the RTJ.
“I was smart enough at least to know that there ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell that this idea is going to work if I don’t get advertising behind it,” Bronner said.
The trail had been open for almost two decades before it made any money in golf revenue, Bronner said.
“We basically jumped up and down with excitement in 2019, 2020, because it took all those years to basically break even in the trail,” Bronner said.
Bronner said the RTJ made about $1.5 million in 2021, then made more than $10 million in 2022. Bronner said all 11 sites made money in 2023.
The RSA’s resort hotels range from the Marriott Shoals on the Tennessee River to the Grand Hotel in Point Clear on Mobile Bay. Others are Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Prattville, the Renaissance Ross Bridge in Hoover, the Mobile Riverview Plaza, the Battle House Renaissance Mobile, the Renaissance Montgomery, and the Auburn Marriott Opelika.
The hotels have a total of 2,130 rooms, 36 restaurants, and 323,000 square feet of meeting space, according to PCH.
Occupancy has ranged from 65% to 68% the last few years, several percentage points ahead of the industry average, PCH said.
“You need to understand there’s a huge connection between golf and the hotels,” Bronner told the ERS board. “I don’t think either one of them would have survived financially, much less been as successful as both of them have been, without each other.”
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