The Osprey’s Golf Club at Belmont Bay will close Sunday, November 29.
The closure of the golf club brings and end to 18 years of play on a course located on the mixed-used residential and commercial development of Belmont Bay on the bank of the Occoquan River in Woodbridge.
The Osprey’s Restaurant located in the same clubhouse will remain open for business. It briefly closed in 2013, but later reopened for business.
The golf course will remain an open space, maintained by the developers of Belmont Bay. Residents will be able to walk and bike along the old golf cart paths.
The golf club has been losing money on the golf operation since it opened in 1997. The average round of golf costs about $40 at the public course.
“We’ve been supporting all of these loses over the years with sales of real estate to subsidize to keep the golf course open,” said Preston Miller, with Belmont Bay, LCC.
The club booked 27,000 rounds of golf in one year during its peak. Now less than 20,000 rounds of golf are played at the course annually.
“The revenue is just not there,” said Miller. “The sound business decision would have been to close it down years ago.”
Belmont Bay is located in the northern portion of Woodbridge, behind the Woodbridge Virginia Railway Express station. Home sales are up in the neighborhood, in large part because of Belmont Bay’s convenient location to commuter rail and Interstate 95.
“The golf course has always been nice but not a must-have,” said Cindy Jones, who sells homes in Belmont Bay. “The draw of this community is that it is a nice location, it’s a small community, and neighbors can to walk around and get to know each other.”
Miller is a third-generation member of the Caruthers Family — the developers of Belmont Bay. He said the project has not taken off as planned due to the lack of a promised interchange at Routes 1 and 123.
Complete with a flyover, the interchange would connect drivers with Express and Belmont Bay drives, become the main entrance way to the neighborhood. Route 1 is being widened in Woodbridge from Mary’s Way north to the Occoquan River, to include an interchange at Routes 1 and 123.
A flyover ramp from the interchange into the Belmont Bay neighborhood has been designed, but $100 million in funds to build the ramp have yet to be found, said Woodbridge District Supervisor Frank Principi.
A new science center to be operated by George Mason University is under construction on the bank of the Occoquan River at Belmont Bay, and so are eight new town homes — four of which are sold to new homeowners. A new corner market also just opened for business in front of the neighborhood’s marina.
