Hidden in the secluded woods of Opelika on Lake Saugahatchee lies a 600-acre sanctuary for golf enthusiasts.
The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Grand National features 54 scenic holes and boasts a country club atmosphere despite being a public course. Grand National, designed by legendary golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, serves as an escape for locals and a prime destination for tourists who surge the Opelika and Auburn economies.
In the late 1980s, Jones was recruited by Dr. David Bronner, CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, to design professional-grade golf courses across Alabama to boost the state’s economy by having a unique tourist attraction. Now the Trail has 11 sites across the state that received national acclaim, including the 2009 No. 1-ranked public course in the country by Golf World, Grand National in Opelika.
“(Bronner) wanted to change the image of the state of Alabama,” Grand National Manager Scott Gomberg said. “What it did was it made tourism the No. 1 attraction for the state of Alabama. So the state got a new perception, as well as some unbelievable golf courses.”
Grand National gives the Opelika-Auburn community an amenity to entice tourists. The money tourism generates in the small metropolitan area with a population of 136,000 is essential to an area that would otherwise struggle to draw tourists.
“This is not the beach,” Opelika-Auburn Tourism Bureau Vice President Robyn Bridges said, “this is not Las Vegas, this is not a destination that people are going to come to because there’s not a lot to do. The course is really our only draw that we can put out there. Our national advertising is heavily weighted toward the course.”
Since the Trail opened across the state in the 1980s, tourism in Opelika-Auburn has shown steady growth, an average of 10 percent a year. Even in a down economy in 2008 and 2009, the growth was able to continue, though not in the double digits.
“When that project began back in the mid 1980s, tourism in the state of Alabama was about a $2 billion industry,” Bridges said. “Now, tourism in the state of Alabama is a $9 billion industry and much of the credit has been given to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.”
Gomberg said Grand National hosts between 65,000 and 66,000 rounds a year. At an average of $42 per round, just the golf generates $2.75 million per year. But the golf is not the whole story why Grand National is beneficial to the community.
“We also built a hotel on property here in the Marriott,” Gomberg said. ”So now we’ve got the taxes from the Marriott going straight to tourism. So we have those impacts right there, plus you have the people coming in that are shopping and putting Auburn/Opelika on the map.”
The Marriott is also owned by the Retirement Systems of Alabama and frequently sells out its 129 rooms at an average of $150 per night.
“It really is a great benefit to bring in tourists,” Marriott Manager Jay Prater said. “Bringing in their dollars impacts the tax base keeps our residents’ taxes low because we’re able to have the tourists come in and spend money at our restaurants and hotels. That tax revenue goes back to the cities and counties, and therefore it lessens the tax burden on everyone else in the community.”
The Auburn-Opelika Tourism Bureau is funded by the 13 percent lodging tax from hotels. Tourism generates $256 million per year in Auburn-Opelika and provides 5,000 jobs.
“Tourism is a very clean business,” Bridges said. “If you have to go out and recruit an auto to come and be in the city and bring jobs and bring money, then we have to pay for those people to go to school, we have to pay for those people to live here and we have to pay for the expense of having them as citizens. Whereas something like tourism, the people come, they spend their money, they leave. We call it easy money.”
The Trail draws crowds primarily in the fall and spring, but stays busy year-round. The top-quality golf is attractive to tourists across the county, and across the border.
“Right now we’ve got tons of Canadians walking through the doors,” Gomberg said. “When you look at the Trail broken down by tourism, we have tons of people from California, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, all those northern states. When it’s still cold there, but starts warming up here in Alabama, we have a lot of play in that March, April, May time zone when their courses are still closed.”
But the course doesn’t aim solely at tourists, it also caters to citizens statewide. Each year, Grand National hosts the boys’ and girls’ high school golf state championships for all six divisions.
“The high school state championship is a two-day event, but it actually stretches Sunday practice rounds to Monday and Tuesday rounds,” Gomberg said. ”There’s 500 to 600 people on the golf course at those, so all the hotel rooms are sold out. All the restaurants are sold out for three days, and then you’ve got the travel. It brings in quite a few people.”
In 2008, the Auburn-Opelika GDP was $3.56 million and grew at an annual rate of 4.3 percent between 2001 and 2008, according to EconPost.com. Bridges said University leads the way in drawing tourists, but Grand National is an essential part of injecting big bucks into a small town.
“It is definitely one of our biggest attractors,” Bridges said. “It’s actually second, we think based on studies we’ve done, to Auburn University in terms of what brings the most people into the area: leisure travelers.”
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