Bay Club Co. has acquired Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach for $73 million, the latest addition to the San Francisco-based company’s holdings in Southern California.
The purchase, which closed June 1, includes the ground lease for the facility and club operations, Kevin Klipfel, Bay Club’s chief operating officer, said last week. The seller was Keith Brackpool, co-founder and chairman of Cadiz Inc. in downtown, who developed the club in 1982.
Bay Club targeted the Manhattan Country Club, which was not on the market, as an addition to its mix of gym and leisure facilities, Klipfel said.
“We think of ourselves as a hospitality company, not a gym company,” he said.
The club is 75,270 square feet, according to CoStar, and includes a 6,000-square-foot gym; 18 courts for tennis, squash, and racquetball; a 25-meter outdoor pool as well as several eateries. About 1,500 families are members.
The city of Manhattan Beach owns the underlying 7.5-acre plot of land on Parkview Avenue near the intersection of Rosecrans Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard.
According to Bay Club’s website, the property is the company’s eighth acquisition in Los Angeles County, building on its 2015 purchase of 11 Spectrum Athletic Clubs in Southern California. Bay Club now has four locations in the South Bay, which are meant to complement each other with slightly different services.
Klipfel said the company plans to continue expanding over the next year in California, where it claims a total of 23 properties serving more than 50,000 memberships. The deal was financed through cash and debt on Bay Club’s overall business. New York-based York Capital Management is a majority investor in the company.
The sale came a month after Brackpool got good news for Cadiz and its long-sought desert water storage and transmission venture. The project is expected to get a key federal approval by the Trump administration, his company announced last month, when Cadiz also reported that it had arranged up to $255 million in construction financing and $45 million in debt relief from private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
– Daina Beth Solomon
