The owner of the largest chain of do-it-yourself stores in Romania has floated a plan to build a golf resort outside Suceava, in the northeastern part of the nation.
Dragomirna Golf Resort will take shape on 250 acres in the town of Mitocul Dragomirnei. It’ll include 120 townhouses and apartments, a 150-room hotel, meeting space, a spa, a shopping area, sports fields, an outdoor stage for concerts and shows, an 18-hole golf course, and a golf academy with a nine-hole course.
Dragomirna will be developed by Dragos Paval, who controls a network of 22 Dedeman stores in Romania. Like Home Depot stores in the United States, Dedman outlets sell all sorts of home-improvement goods, including tools, construction materials, furniture, small appliances, and gardening gear. The Bacau-based chain rang up more than $507 million in sales last year.
Paval and his partners – Dragos-Mihai Serseni, Gheorghe David, and Daniel Tănase – have been thinking about developing the property in Mitocul Dragonirnei since 2008. News reports suggest that the partners are trying to enlist some of the area’s municipalities to support the venture, in an attempt to secure what they describe as “European funding,” and that they hope to sign Starwood as the hotel’s operator.
As best we can determine, Romania currently has just 500 “registered” golfers (the number swells to 3,000 when foreign players living in Romania are included) who are serviced by two 18-hole courses, a pair of nines in Prahova, and a six-hole track in Bucharest. The 18-hole tracks, Paul Tomita Golf Club in Pianu de Jos and Tite Golf Course in Recas, opened, respectively, in 1995 and 2003.
This story originally appeared in the World Edition of the Golf Course Report, in a slightly different form. For a sample copy of the WorldEdition@aol.com.