Anyone who has intermittently visited the greater St. George area throughout the past, say, 20 or so years knows it’s like seeing a distant child relative only periodically over the years, exclaiming every time, “Wow, you got big!” When you’re not paying day-to-day attention, growth sneaks up on you. This is how we felt on a tour last October of the newly finished Black Desert Resort in St. George on the eve of hosting its first stop on the PGA Tour. A fleet of workers and hotel staff worked in a flurry to finalize everything before the onslaught of professional golfers, their entourage and golf fans arrived at the front desk. It had that new hotel smell, down to the persistent scent of polishing oils and cleaner in the air as the final burnish was applied.
But Rome was not built in a day, and neither was Black Desert. This project started nearly 20 years ago. And while there is a group of partners behind the effort, one man has been the face of the project since its inception. Mr. Patrick Manning.
“I started in Florida so this land that is Black Desert is different from anything I’d ever experienced,” Manning says of his first visits to Ivins. “The feelings I have about it are overwhelming.”
He was so enthusiastic about the idea that he moved his family to St. George to lay the groundwork in 2005–2006. Manning and his partners knew it would take patience.
However, if you’ve ever met Manning, “patience” might not seem the first quality you would ascribe to him. In the run-up to the PGA, Manning was seemingly everywhere. Out on the course greeting players for the event. Suddenly he’d be walking the hotel, saying hello to guests. Then bam, he’s in the restaurant buttonholing a builder about some detail. He is not a man who can sit still.
“The PGA was not part of the planning,” he says. “We set out to design a world-class golf course, that was the goal. But then we got to the tour stop before the grass was even planted we moved into a fast and furious mode.”
The tour stop was a success and this May, Black Desert hosted the LPGA Tour.
“Everybody who knows me knows I believe everything is possible,” he says. “We are going to make a splash with the LPGA. We are going to show these players the love and respect they deserve.”
The LPGA has received criticism that the female players are not given the same level of treatment as the men on the PGA. To that end, Manning and his partners are flying the golfers in on private jets.
“Black Desert will roll out the red carpet,” Manning says.
Still, when you consider the project took nearly two decades of careful work, it simply must have taken patience to get here. “The first thing I understood was that this was going to take patience to do it right,” he says, “we became a partner with the community and this land. Looking out across the lava with the red sandstone cliffs and pine valleys, we knew that building something as big as Black Desert would require passion and patience to do it responsibly.”
“Responsibility” is another word he uses often. The project built in sizeable conservation easements that would go to Santa Clara and Ivins and preserve open spaces. He is quick to point out that despite the rumors the Black Desert Golf Course will never be a private course and will continue to be open to public play.
“This is is luxury meets you,” he says. “We’re the only spot in the country on the PGA and LPGA tour where you can go to a two-acre putting green with hot tubs and fire pits. Show up in swim trunks and flip-flops and putt around. Sometimes luxury is being able to putt with bare feet.”
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