Zucker to buy Long Island National Golf Club

Donald Zucker, a Manhattan-based real estate mogul, has agreed to buy his second distressed golf property on Long Island, New York. Zucker, acting as Golf Riverhead LLC, has offered $6 million for the bankrupt Long Island National Golf Club, which features a Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed course that opened in 1999. Bill Gatz, the club’s developer, once called Jones “a genius,” but he may have changed his mind after he realized that Long Island National generated less income than the potato farm it was built on. Gatz wanted $10 million for the property but could find no takers. The club, in Riverhead, had been scheduled to sell at a public auction that was canceled due to lack of interest. In 2009, Zucker bought North Shore Country Club in Glen Head and hired Tom Doak’s firm to give it a makeover. (The work was overseen by Bruce Hepner.) It sounds as though something similar may be in the works at Long Island National, for Zucker told Newsday that he plans to have Doak “put his eyes on it.”