A family feud has forced the sale of two golf courses and other properties in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. South Street Partners, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based investment group, reportedly paid a price north of $350 million for Kiawah Partners, the development entity that’s developing the 10,000-acre island.
The purchase includes courses designed by Tom Fazio and Tom Watson as well as financially challenged Doonbeg Golf Club in Ireland and Christophe Harbour, a long-delayed resort community on St. Kitts that’s been master-planned to include a Fazio-designed course. Charles P. “Buddy” Darby III and a cousin, Leonard Long, co-founded Kiawah Partners in the late 1980s but in recent years haven’t been able to see eye-to-eye on the foreign properties, which now have an uncertain future. Kiawah Island’s renowned Ocean Course, which hosted last year’s PGA Championship, wasn’t part of the sale.