The Cape Breton Ski Club has filed an injunction in Nova Scotia Supreme Court to halt the sale of The Lakes golf club to the Ben Eoin Development Group Inc.
Heavily indebted, Ben Eoin Golf Club Ltd., which operates The Lakes, reached an agreement in February with the development group for it to take over the club’s assets and liabilities.
The Lakes shareholders voted 96.8 per cent in favour of the deal on Feb. 5. An initial vote to accept the proposal was rejected on Dec. 16.
The transfer of ownership of the golf course was in the best interest of shareholders, Ben Eoin Golf board of directors president Coleen Moore-Hayes said Friday.
She said the partners in the Ben Eoin Development Group were also shareholders in The Lakes golf course and were well aware of the state of the club’s finances.
The Ben Eoin Development Group partners listed on the Nova Scotia Registry of Joint Stock Companies are president/secretary Rodney Colbourne and directors Mike Kenny, Troy Wilson, Steve MacDougall, Siva Thanamayooran and Glen Brann.
Along with a mortgage, operating budget and maintaining expensive golf course equipment, the golf club had to start paying down on its 10-year, $3.5-million loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
The repayment schedule to ACOA amounted to 45 per cent of the golf club’s profit over the run of a fiscal year, Moore-Hayes said.
“We wrote our first cheque and now I’m getting ready to write our second one because … this is not a forgivable debt,” she said.
