Dove Canyon Country Club Sold to Sanyo Foods

GARDEN GROVE —  After more than a year of talks, developer Garth Chambers said Thursday that he has sold the Dove Canyon Country Club in South County to a division of Japan’s largest noodle maker.

The purchase by Sanyo Foods Corp. of America represents the re-entry of the Japanese into the U.S. golf course market, which they virtually abandoned more than a year ago when the economy began sinking.

Chambers would not give details of Thursday’s transaction except to say that he made a profit on it. The course, designed by golfing legend Jack Nicklaus, cost $8 million to build, he said, and the 47,000-square-foot clubhouse cost $12 million.

The sale lifted a financial cloud that has shadowed the country club. “It gets all the debt off the remaining land and allows me to ride through,” Chambers said. “It comes at a great time. I got tired of stories about my imminent demise.”

Sanyo is buying Dove Canyon as “a good investment in the future,” said Yoshihiko Kinno, the assistant treasurer of the company.

The company, based in Garden Grove, has made ramen-style noodles for 30 years. It also owns Loma Santa Fe in the San Diego County community of Solana Beach and the Yorba Linda Country Club in Yorba Linda. In Dove Canyon, situated in an unincorporated area of Orange County near Coto de Caza, Sanyo may have found its flagship.

“We negotiated with Garth Chambers for a good year before we agreed to acquire it,” Kinno said. “We broke off negotiations in the fall of 1991. And in March of this year, both parties decided to resume negotiations.”

Kinno also said that Sanyo has retained Paloma Golf Group Inc.--a new company Chambers started--to manage the course.