About Preserve Bluewater Bay

Originally Bluewater Bay only had two 9 hole courses. The Bay and the Lake. The third course, the Marsh course, was added in 1984. The fourth 9 hole course was the course within Magnolia Plantation added in 1996. More recently, the course at Magnolia Plantation and the Lake course have closed.

In August of 2021, an emergency meeting was called by the attorney for Bluewater Bay Development Venture (BBDV), which currently owns the land The Bay and The Marsh golf courses sit on, with The Men’s Golf Association (MGA) board. The MGA was told The Bay nine-hole course was going to be closed and would potentially be developed. This would mean that a single course would remain of the original four courses in Bluewater Bay – the nine-hole course known as The Marsh.

In response, LeMire and the four other PBWB managers started an LLC – Preserve Bluewater Bay (PBWB) – to work toward buying The Bay and The Marsh golf courses with a mind to keeping them as golf courses or otherwise preserving them as green space. While it might not be golf courses that occupy the space in the future, the founders of PBWB said they want to ensure the 150 acres of land is not developed.

PBWB financially committed, with a letter of intent and a $25,000 deposit, to purchase the land that makes up the golf courses left in Bluewater Bay. They started the two-year lease-to-own effort on 1 March 2022 with the option to purchase the land the courses sit on. While PBWB leases the land, they are responsible for paying salaries for employees, insurance and day-to-day operations of the course.

If PBWB can raise the money within one year to purchase the land from BBDV, it will cost $2.2 million. If it takes the group two years to raise the money, it will cost them no more than $2.4 million. The purchase would include The Bay course, The Marsh course, the maintenance shop, equipment used to care for the land, and several of The Lake course holes (1,2 and 3) which are currently closed. The clubhouse would not be a part of the purchase at the present time.

Rules outlined in the Development of Regional Impact (DRI) guidelines govern the use of the land now known as Bluewater Bay. Those rules allow any developer to build much more dense housing on the land where the golf courses now lie. Currently, the DRI allows for a little over 4,000 homes to be built in Bluewater Bay. According to Preserve BWB, there are currently about 3,800 homes in the area.

The following individuals are the founders and managers of Preserve Bluewater Bay:

Justin LeMire
Dave Rauch
Bud Roberts
Brien House
Art Jean