Five years ago, Mark Haugejorde stumbled upon some land in western Minnesota. He had grown up in the area, where his father founded Little Crow Golf Resort in Spicer. Mark played competitive golf at the University of Houston and built a career in the industry, returning to Minnesota in 2017. “I was warned by an engineer: It’s not easy to build a golf course in Minnesota,” says Haugejorde. “And he was right.” 

Today, Haugejorde is president of Tepetonka, a private club set to open this summer in New London, 90 minutes west of the cities. It’s the state’s first fractional ownership club, limited to 100 memberships, by invitation. Haugejorde is focused on adding members from “ranked” clubs.

Designers at OCM Golf, the Australia-based architecture firm that worked on Tepetonka, told him that his land is about as optimal for a course as possible. Two summers of overwhelming rainfall hampered construction. 

“We’ve created a lifestyle experience,” says Haugejorde, with cabins and lodges totaling 36 rooms; 16 more will open by 2028. At nearby Green Lake, the company will open Tepetonka Beach Club, which features additional lodging. Most recently, Tepetonka Ranch, an inn set on 140-acres, was added to the master plan. The ranch will have a spa with saunas, a heated pool, and a gym. 

Tepetonka’s setup is designed to avoid capacity issues that many other private clubs face. Each member pre-purchases a specific number of rounds and contractually becomes one of the owners of the club. Haugejorde compared it to NetJets, a fractional ownership private jet company.

“The marketing concept … is that you’re paying to have limited, exclusive access to top-rate facilities that aren’t available to the public.”

—Keven Rowe, Buchalter Law

Haugejorde would not discuss any details about the economics of the club, but said that “we’ve got this total bucket of golf that we’re going to allow, 10,000 rounds by members. If you were to buy a 1% interest in the club, you would have 100 rounds.” Members can share their rounds with guests. Each membership can be shared by as many as four people.

The appeal of Tepetonka’s approach is exclusivity, says Keven Rowe, a Salt Lake City-based attorney with experience developing and financing courses. “The marketing concept behind them is that you’re paying to have limited, exclusive access to top-rate facilities that aren’t available to the public,” says Rowe, who estimated that the total membership cost was likely north of half a million dollars. 

What Rowe finds interesting is that there is no real estate sales component to Tepetonka, which he says is uncommon for private equity clubs, which offer or require purchase of residential units to members. Rowe estimated Tepetonka will cost $25 million to $100 million to develop, depending on the scale of the facilities constructed.