Owners of Cimarron Country Club have announced that the iconic Mission golf course will permanently shut down at the end of August.
Danny Kamel, one of the club’s owners, confirmed the news Thursday afternoon.
“About two years ago we acquired the property,” Kamel said. “When we acquired it, actually the previous owners were going to shut it down. When we got it delivered, everyone had been fired, and in one day, we hired everyone back just to give it one last shot. We knew the importance of the business for the community.”
Kamel cited a few lawsuits filed by members of the Cimarron Homeowners Association as having negatively affected the flow of business to the golf course.
“Endless, endless defamation,” Kamel said. “Telling people, ‘This place is no good.’ ‘You should cancel your membership.’ ‘Leave, leave, leave.’ Within a matter of two or three months, we lost about half of our members due to that.”
Kamel said that the country club has continually been losing money for the last year-and-a-half, resulting in his accountant recommending that the owners shut down all golf and club house related operations.
“This month we said that we don’t anticipate the situation with previous members giving us a second chance or our neighbors to stop badmouthing us,” Kamel said. “It just never happened. Unfortunately, we have to close it. That’s not what we wanted to do. We’ve been sustaining this for two whole years.”
According to a news release, the country club will cease operations Aug. 31.
“We’re very sad about this, but we were left with no choice,” Kamel said.
