Rezoning decision keeps Jones Creek golf course without clubhouse

A controversial zoning change in one of Columbia County’s most upscale neighborhoods stayed intact Tuesday, meaning a defunct golf course is still without its original clubhouse.

Dozens of Jones Creek residents who packed the gallery at the Columbia County Board of Commissioners meeting left upset after their appeal to halt the zoning change at 777 Jones Creek Dr. didn’t get approved.

Jones Creek Golf Course closed in September 2018. In 2019 the course’s clubhouse and adjoining parking lot were purchased by homebuilder Mark Herbert’s company MBH Holdings, and the building continued to be rented to a catering business while the course itself, still without a new owner, fell into disuse and later foreclosure.

Herbert originally filed a request with the county to change the zoning designation of the property from Planned Unit Development to S-1 so it can be used only as “event, hospitality and meeting space; restaurant space; and catering space and kitchen.” Under that request, the building could not legally be permitted to operate as a golf clubhouse.

That request was protested by Jones Creek residents eager to see the golf course refurbished. Past developers who have approached the Jones Creek Homeowners Association have said that any plan to resurrect the golf course would have to include the centrally located clubhouse.

Most recently, golf event management company Bond Golf Global is reopening Jones Creek’s driving range beginning Masters Week, with a long-term goal of resurrecting the entire course.

Herbert then submitted a new rezoning request. Instead of changing the zoning to S-1, it became a request to make a minor change to the Planned Unit Development, or PUD, conditions. Legally, the new request did not have to be approved by the Columbia County Board of Commissioners, only the county’s Planning Commission, whose members are appointed and not chosen by voting citizens.

The new request asked to change the building’s operating hours from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, and to prohibit trash pickup between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

But attorney and Jones Creek resident Hammad Sheikh told commissioners that those changes aren’t what’s upsetting his neighbors – it’s what’s staying the same. The minor revision keeps in place the proposed future use of the property as “hospitality meeting space, restaurant space, catering space and kitchen.”

“That’s not what that clubhouse is meant for, used for and is needed for,”…