Streamsong Resort in Florida opened in 2012, and aside from its original two golf courses and the addition of a lodge and a third course, a major talking point has always been its owner, Mosaic Company.
One of the world’s largest phosphate producers, Mosaic had for decades mined the remote Central Florida site where Streamsong was constructed, about an hour’s drive southeast of Tampa and 90 minutes southwest of Orlando. Those past mining activities defined the land, leaving huge piles of sand that over time had turned into surreal dunes. The landscape makes the three courses at Streamsong very different than just about anything else in Florida.
But Mosaic was still first and foremost a mining company. It hired golf management company KemperSports of Illinois to operate the golf courses from the start, and two years ago KemperSports took over management of the entire resort, including hospitality. For several years there was speculation that Mosaic would sell the resort at some time.
That time has come, as Mosaic has sold Streamsong Resort to its longtime management partner, KemperSports. As first reported by the Fire Pit Collective, the sale price was $160 million, confirmed by Mosaic in a news release Friday. The acquisition included three golf courses, two clubhouses, the Streamsong Lodge and other amenities, all on 7,000 acres as part of the deal. Just over 2,000 of those acres are in use now as part of the resort.
Each of Streamsong’s three courses – the Red by designers Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the Blue by Tom Doak and the Black by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner – ranks in the top 60 on Golfweek’s Best list of top modern courses in the United States. The Red ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access layouts in Florida, with the Black No. 3 and the Blue No. 4 on that list. Streamsong is one of just a handful of resorts to have so many highly ranked courses.
“We’re very excited,” Steve Skinner, the CEO of KemperSports, told Golfweek on Friday. “As you know, we’ve been involved with this property since almost Day 1, for over 10 years. It’s such a special project and such a special property, we’re just really excited. It’s a rare place in golf and just really iconic.”
Skinner – a trained lawyer who has worked at KemperSports since 1998 – described the acquisition as having been competitive with several other potential buyers looking to take advantage of golf’s resurgent popularity since the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. He said there aren’t many properties like Streamsong with its three courses, and interest was high.
KemperSports has 140 properties in its management stable, Skinner said, including 15 courses it owns and another dozen it leases. Those properties under management include both private clubs and public-access layouts, and the company also operates a division focused on youth and recreational sports venues. KemperSports was founded in 1978 by Steve Lesnick, who still serves as its chairman, and in 2022 the company took on several new investors who provided capital for expansion, including the Streamsong acquisition.
Having managed Streamsong’s golf for a decade and the entire resort in recent years, there isn’t a tremendous learning curve for KemperSports as it takes over the resort. KemperSports doesn’t plan any changes to the staff, and Skinner said he has faith in the people working at the resort to keep a focus on customers and continuous improvements. Skinner spoke to Golfweek of several plans for the resort, both in the short and long-term.
The biggest change coming soon will be the development of The Chain, a non-traditional, short, 18-hole course by the team of Coore and Crenshaw to be built directly across from the resort’s 228-room hotel. Streamsong announced the plans to build The Chain a year ago.
Is even more golf on the horizon for Streamsong? Read on for that and more from Skinner. This discussion has been edited for length.
Golfweek: You mentioned that you’ve been involved since Day 1. Could you have ever imagined that things at Streamsong would turn out the way they have after 10 years, with the addition of a new course (the Black) and the Streamsong Lodge and everything else?
Skinner: It really is amazing. I’m out on the same roads now that I was on before we opened 10 years ago, when it was under construction. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this is really remote. Can they build something really special?” And I think it’s amazing the growth it’s seen and, really, the popularity.
It all starts for us two ways. One, it’s really unique golf, unique to Florida and unique to the Southeast. And two, the people. We’re really fortunate we’ve got great people.
The last two years, we’ve really focused on the golfer and the golf experience. And it’s paid off and really kind of hit a sweet spot among the golfers, just making it all about the golfers.
You can see how things have changed in recent years, with the focus more on golf. You can see it from the menus in the restaurants all the way to name changes of venues around the resort. Was that an overdue change, to put the focus back on the golfer?
Yeah, that was really a change in vision and focus. What I think that happened is the golf courses evolved, and you have three golf courses in the top 100 (modern courses in the U.S.) and three courses in the top 25 you can play (Golfweek’s Best top 100 public-access), and I think the golf turned out even better than anyone could have imagined. So then it really became, this is a special place where people will travel long distances to come play golf and to stay.
We really felt, that’s what we do. We’re golf, and we’re passionate about golf. We felt we really could tap into that. As I always say, we focused everything in the resort around the golfer, around their tee times and making it more relaxed. From the moment you’re greeted at the lodge, everyone is talking about golf all the time, which course you just played and which course you’re playing next. It was a natural kind of evolution.
Can you walk me through how the deal came together?
We’ve obviously had a great relationship for a long time with Mosaic and their management team. We’ve often expressed to them that when they felt ready to pass the torch to someone, we wanted to be that group. So there was a series of conversations that happened formally and informally for years now. They felt the time was right starting this past summer, so we spent the last couple months working out all the details.
For Streamsong, are there any changes on the way? Anything short-term or long-term besides the addition of The Chain and the new putting course there and those amenities?
The beauty of this, because we have been involved so long and know it so well, we’re 100 percent committed to The Chain and those other resources there, so that’s really going to be our big near-term project. It should start construction, knock on wood, in the next 45 days to get that open this year. That’ll be the main focus.
As we go forward, we will be looking in the longer term for opportunities to add amenities, whether that’s additional lodging or even an additional golf course. We see a lot of demand, so we see a lot of opportunities as we look down the road to continually expand the resort. And it will all be focused around the golf.
We might look at some cottages in the future. We’ve talked a lot about that, and I think that will be part of our long-term plan. That’s what golfers and golf groups like to do. They come in groups of four, eight, 12, 16, and they like to have that camaraderie.
We have great lodge offerings here now, and we do have the new Clubhouse Experience that is tapping into that. Above the Red and Blue’s shared clubhouse, we have 12 rooms (plus an expansive communal living room complete with food service and pool table) that are sold as a package, and that’s going very well. So we see a lot of demand for that. We’re going to put even more money into that central room and kind of re-do that, but it’s already an upgraded experience. If you have a group, it’s a lot of fun.
You mentioned a fourth full-size course. Is that something you’ve had your eyes on for a while out there? You have another 5,000 acres.
Very early stages. There’s a lot of land out here, a lot of good land left. We haven’t really got very far, but as the demand continues to grow, that’s obviously kind of the next way to go with one of these parcels. There have been architects over the years who have come out and looked at it and picked out some sites, but we haven’t gotten very far. That’s just kind of our long-term planning.
Does Kemper Sports have any plans for more acquisitions?
We want to continue to grow in all of our areas. We’ve brought on more than 20 properties, most of them third-party management properties, in the last year. So we’ll continue to grow the third-party management piece and the leasing piece. And you know, when we see the right opportunity to grow and acquire a club or a course or even a resort, we will continue to do that. We always go where the opportunity takes us.
