Land Leases from Melville City Council
This topic provides a common link to all historical lease documents for the 68-hectare land reserve on which the MGGC golf course and clubhouse are located. The land, Reserve 28600, is a crown reserve vested in the City of Melville for Parks and Recreation. Thus, the City manages the lease of the reserve to the club on behalf of the State. The attachment to this topic shows the plan of the reserve that appears in the original 1967-1988 lease documents.
Lease arrangements with the Council are critical to the continued existence of the club. Key factors of the leases are the duration and the rental or rates that the club is required to pay. Typically, the club commences negotiations with the Council well in advance of the existing lease period expiry. This ensures that the club can effectively plan for the ongoing maintenance and upgrades required to maintain the facilities.
Historical negotiations with the Council have at times been both complex and difficult. Detailed documentation is maintained by the club but is not made publicly available on the history archive due to the presence of some sensitive content.
With the land located within the City of Melville, the club provides a not-for-profit sporting facility to the nearby community. In particular, the club always has a considerable proportion of its members who are residents of the City. When negotiating new leases with the Council these and other factors have been used to support the establishment of the club’s annual lease payment. Many other Perth metropolitan golf clubs also lease their land in a comparable manner and a peppercorn or nominal rental is common.
To further respect the club’s close relationship with the City, the Mayor has always been invited to serve as our Club Patron. This relationship goes even deeper when recognising that most major historical projects have been financed by loans from the Council.
In the series of lease documents in the linked records you will see that the periods of the leases vary between ten to twenty-one years. The most significant of these was the original twenty-one-year lease negotiated by the club’s founding Council of Management, commencing in 1967.
At this point in time there is one lease covering the years 1999 to 2006 that is not available.
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