The 12th green at the Deer Creek Golf Club in Littleton has been overtaken by nature after the course was shut down in recent years, shown on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Deer Creek Golf Course is dying.
Where once lay verdant fairways, the 18-hole course near Jefferson County’s Ken Caryl Ranch community is now largely weeds, cattails and long grasses. Nature, inexorably, reclaims its own.
No one has played a legitimate round of golf here in three years. The clubhouse sits empty and forlorn, with a four-tiered fountain at its entry now dry and defunct. And though Deer Creek Golf Course claims on its website that it is merely “closed for renovation” and looks forward “to serving you in the spring,” nobody believes it.
“If you’re rational, you can tell it’s not going to be a golf course again,” said John Walker, president of the Meadow Ranch homeowner’s association, which oversees 333 homes that line portions of the course along a stretch of C-470 near Kipling Street.
Deer Creek’s future is anyone’s guess. It’s a mystery the course’s owner hasn’t unraveled publicly, an unanswered question that’s raised curiosity among the hundreds of people who live near its fairways.
The course isn’t being watered, mowed or otherwise maintained, and it shows. The greens are no longer green. The sand traps are choked with weeds and grasses.
“It’s like nature just took over,” Walker said. “It’s pretty incredible how fast it happened.”
The course’s owner, Stacey Hart, didn’t return multiple requests for comment and his son, Tom, told The Denver Post that he hasn’t been involved in Deer Creek in years.
The uncertainty swirling around Deer Creek, which opened in 2000 at 8135 Shaffer Parkway, is more chronic than recent. A full decade ago, Meadow Ranch residents worried about the future of the golf course. A Stacey Hart-owned entity, In Play Membership Golf, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the summer of 2013. In Play owned Deer Creek at the time.
While there was talk then of shrinking the course to a nine-hole layout, Hart worked out a deal with Cardel Homes to sell the builder the course’s driving range, while keeping all the greens in place.
Cardel has built about 70 homes on former golf course property and is moving dirt for another 50.
The Deer Creek property is zoned for a golf course or open space under Jefferson County’s land-use code. The county’s planning and zoning director, Chris O’Keefe, said his department has received no applications to rezone the course.
He also said he’s not aware of any for-sale listing for the property.
The front nine holes at the Deer Creek Golf Club in Littleton has been overtaken by nature after the course was shut down in recent years, shown on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Two entities that would be candidates to buy the land to preserve and manage it as open space, Foothills Park & Recreation District and Ken Caryl Ranch’s Plains Metro District, both told the Post that no discussions are underway about a purchase. Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper, who represents Ken Caryl Ranch as part of District 3, had nothing to add about Deer Creek’s future.
“The downside is not knowing what is going to happen to it,” said Paul Quinlan, who has lived with his wife, Kathy, in the retiree-heavy community The Village at Meadow Ranch for nearly a decade.
Quinlan, whose home is within a stone’s throw of Deer Creek’s 12th hole, said he hasn’t missed the noise from players using the course. Where once he saw only golf carts and sailing balls from his deck, he regularly sees wildlife these days — coyotes, deer and even a mountain lion. He admits he’s not a golfer.
“This could turn into an open space. I’d like to see that,” Quinlan said.
His neighbor, Gary Householder, also doesn’t lament the slow decline of the golf course. He walks his dogs along the golf cart path, something not allowed when Deer Creek was a functioning facility.
“I can breathe, I can think,” he said of his walks through the cattails.
Others, though, miss the links. Karen Isaacson, a 15-year resident of Meadow Ranch, said she enjoyed watching golfers amble along the fairway behind her home, hopeful for a birdie at the ninth hole. Kids set up lemonade stands and sold cups of refreshment to passing golfers.
“This year, they really let it go,” she said of the overgrowth creeping up to her property line. “I kind of miss the golf course.”
And like many residents of the neighborhood, Isaacson worries about the impact on property values from a golf course that is no more.
Chris Plant, whose home backs up to the 11th hole, said he paid a $75,000 golf course premium when he purchased his home nearly 25 years ago. Deer Creek’s design and configuration, he said, offered a solid challenge for players and was a real “golfer’s golf course.”
“It was one of the best golf courses in the metro area and it’s sad that someone would let it go,” Plant said. “It has been a long drawn-out affair with no end in sight.”
Hart long has been involved with Colorado’s golfing scene as a one-time owner of the Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock and the Cherry Creek Country Club in Denver. He was forced to cede the Cherry Creek facility to his wife as part of their divorce settlement in 2009.
Whether Hart eventually offloads Deer Creek, too, has Meadow Ranch residents talking and wondering. The question regularly comes up at their homeowners association meetings.
But so far, Hart hasn’t shared his intentions.
In the meantime, Quinlan, living near the former 12th hole, said there was one immediate and noticeable benefit of the golf course’s slow demise.
“We haven’t had any windows broken in the last three years,” he said.
This story was originally published by The Denver Post, a BusinessDen news partner.
The 12th green at the Deer Creek Golf Club in Littleton has been overtaken by nature after the course was shut down in recent years, shown on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Deer Creek Golf Course is dying.
Where once lay verdant fairways, the 18-hole course near Jefferson County’s Ken Caryl Ranch community is now largely weeds, cattails and long grasses. Nature, inexorably, reclaims its own.
No one has played a legitimate round of golf here in three years. The clubhouse sits empty and forlorn, with a four-tiered fountain at its entry now dry and defunct. And though Deer Creek Golf Course claims on its website that it is merely “closed for renovation” and looks forward “to serving you in the spring,” nobody believes it.
“If you’re rational, you can tell it’s not going to be a golf course again,” said John Walker, president of the Meadow Ranch homeowner’s association, which oversees 333 homes that line portions of the course along a stretch of C-470 near Kipling Street.
Deer Creek’s future is anyone’s guess. It’s a mystery the course’s owner hasn’t unraveled publicly, an unanswered question that’s raised curiosity among the hundreds of people who live near its fairways.
The course isn’t being watered, mowed or otherwise maintained, and it shows. The greens are no longer green. The sand traps are choked with weeds and grasses.
“It’s like nature just took over,” Walker said. “It’s pretty incredible how fast it happened.”
The course’s owner, Stacey Hart, didn’t return multiple requests for comment and his son, Tom, told The Denver Post that he hasn’t been involved in Deer Creek in years.
The uncertainty swirling around Deer Creek, which opened in 2000 at 8135 Shaffer Parkway, is more chronic than recent. A full decade ago, Meadow Ranch residents worried about the future of the golf course. A Stacey Hart-owned entity, In Play Membership Golf, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the summer of 2013. In Play owned Deer Creek at the time.
While there was talk then of shrinking the course to a nine-hole layout, Hart worked out a deal with Cardel Homes to sell the builder the course’s driving range, while keeping all the greens in place.
Cardel has built about 70 homes on former golf course property and is moving dirt for another 50.
The Deer Creek property is zoned for a golf course or open space under Jefferson County’s land-use code. The county’s planning and zoning director, Chris O’Keefe, said his department has received no applications to rezone the course.
He also said he’s not aware of any for-sale listing for the property.
The front nine holes at the Deer Creek Golf Club in Littleton has been overtaken by nature after the course was shut down in recent years, shown on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Two entities that would be candidates to buy the land to preserve and manage it as open space, Foothills Park & Recreation District and Ken Caryl Ranch’s Plains Metro District, both told the Post that no discussions are underway about a purchase. Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper, who represents Ken Caryl Ranch as part of District 3, had nothing to add about Deer Creek’s future.
“The downside is not knowing what is going to happen to it,” said Paul Quinlan, who has lived with his wife, Kathy, in the retiree-heavy community The Village at Meadow Ranch for nearly a decade.
Quinlan, whose home is within a stone’s throw of Deer Creek’s 12th hole, said he hasn’t missed the noise from players using the course. Where once he saw only golf carts and sailing balls from his deck, he regularly sees wildlife these days — coyotes, deer and even a mountain lion. He admits he’s not a golfer.
“This could turn into an open space. I’d like to see that,” Quinlan said.
His neighbor, Gary Householder, also doesn’t lament the slow decline of the golf course. He walks his dogs along the golf cart path, something not allowed when Deer Creek was a functioning facility.
“I can breathe, I can think,” he said of his walks through the cattails.
Others, though, miss the links. Karen Isaacson, a 15-year resident of Meadow Ranch, said she enjoyed watching golfers amble along the fairway behind her home, hopeful for a birdie at the ninth hole. Kids set up lemonade stands and sold cups of refreshment to passing golfers.
“This year, they really let it go,” she said of the overgrowth creeping up to her property line. “I kind of miss the golf course.”
And like many residents of the neighborhood, Isaacson worries about the impact on property values from a golf course that is no more.
Chris Plant, whose home backs up to the 11th hole, said he paid a $75,000 golf course premium when he purchased his home nearly 25 years ago. Deer Creek’s design and configuration, he said, offered a solid challenge for players and was a real “golfer’s golf course.”
“It was one of the best golf courses in the metro area and it’s sad that someone would let it go,” Plant said. “It has been a long drawn-out affair with no end in sight.”
Hart long has been involved with Colorado’s golfing scene as a one-time owner of the Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock and the Cherry Creek Country Club in Denver. He was forced to cede the Cherry Creek facility to his wife as part of their divorce settlement in 2009.
Whether Hart eventually offloads Deer Creek, too, has Meadow Ranch residents talking and wondering. The question regularly comes up at their homeowners association meetings.
But so far, Hart hasn’t shared his intentions.
In the meantime, Quinlan, living near the former 12th hole, said there was one immediate and noticeable benefit of the golf course’s slow demise.
“We haven’t had any windows broken in the last three years,” he said.
This story was originally published by The Denver Post, a BusinessDen news partner.
