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MGA Insurance founder and CEO Lou Marinaccio likes to say he's in the business of risk protection, not merely insurance.
Yet his latest venture is full of hazards — both on the golf course and in the business ledger. Marinaccio and his wife, Anne Marie, recently bought the Suncoast Golf Center & Academy, a lighted nine-hole course near the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport that has indoor and outdoor hitting bays. The couple spent at least $250,000 to renovate the facility.
“It was a pretty run-down property,” Marinaccio tells Coffee Talk. “The greens and fairways were in disrepair.”
The golf industry has also been in bad shape of late, with declines in rounds played and new golfers picking up the sport. That puts an exclamation point on the Marinaccios' acquisition and renovation project. The revamped center includes new LED lights on all nine tees, greens and fairways; new tour-quality sand for the bunkers; and new flags, flag sticks, cups and rakes. Lou Marinaccio, whose Lakewood Ranch-based insurance firm handles around $100 million a year in premiums, says it's basically a brand new facility, down to the landscaping and newly tiled and remodeled restrooms.
But more than a play on the industry's potential rebound, Marinaccio says the purchase was a chance to work with his friend Scott Lamoureaux, a well-known golf executive in the area. Lamoureaux has run golf operations at the Lakewood Ranch Golf and Country Club and was general manager of the Esplanade Golf & Country Club in Lakewood Ranch. He brought the Suncoast opportunity to Marinaccio.
Now director of golf at Suncoast, Lamoureaux says the goal is to move away from the “help-yourself” hands-off approach at many nine-hole training courses. “We are all about making golf fast, fun and affordable,” Lamoureaux says in a statement.
Suncoast is also a host facility for the First Tee Sarasota/Manatee, a nonprofit youth golf development organization for children and teenagers ages 5-18. That's another reason the Marinaccios wanted to take their shot. Says Lou Marinaccio: “We did everything we could to make it better for young people.”
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