THE LAKE DON PEDRO GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB OFFICIALLY REOPENS ON NOV. 27 AFTER BEING CLOSED SINCE SEPTEMBER. When the Porter family was faced with closing the Lake Don Pedro Golf Course and Country Club last summer, they were anquished. The club represented three generations of work, attention to detail and commitment to the community.

“My grandparents made every decision on that place,” Deerwood Corporation’s Chris Porter said last Friday. “It was heartbreaking for them,” to see the doors close last September. “It never sat well with us.”

Since that time, Deerwood has been working to get the worldclass course open to the public again. “There has been such an outpouring of support from the community,” Porter said since the course closed. Partly because of that, the golf course will open to the public again on Nov. 27.

“When we shut down, we weren’t sure how things were going to work out,” Porter said as he prepares for the reopening. “Things were pretty hostile. We didn’t see things improving, but they have.”

When the course closed in September, there was “a lot going on as far as water and politics,” Porter said. At that time, Coraline Porter told the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors that the Lake Don Pedro Community Services District had “run amok” in changing the billing costs for water on a whim.

Porter said her father was spending $150,000 a month on water and the course couldn’t sustain that kind of overhead. “There’s only so much money,” she told the board.

It wasn’t just a loss to golfers, however. The course was the largest North County employer, and the closure meant the loss of 20 to 30 jobs in an area already economically strapped.

The course had reopened after many years of dormancy just 18 months before the lastest hiatus. Jerry Porter of the Deerwood Corporation had spent about $11 million in renovation, replacing the irrigation system, doing extensive landscape work and planting about 1,000 trees. The project also featured a new clubhouse, bar and restaurant, 18 townhomes and 50 new single family residences.

This time around, Chris Porter says things will be done on a smaller scale, with shorter hours and fewer days of operation. When the course originally reopened, “It was a little out of control,” according to Chris Porter. “We were ready for a packed house.”

Now the course will be open Tuesday through Saturday, but will still be available for tournaments and special events by reservation on Sunday and Monday. The facility has cut back on its staff and instituted a 40-hour work week.

“We went back to square one,” Chris Porter explained. “We feel we’ve got it to the point where it can be successful.” If early reservations are any indication, then that statement will prove to be true. The first day of operation is almost completely booked.