River Bend golf course has official reopening date, parts of country club already open

Tina Adkins, Sun Journal
·2 min read
The restaurant at the River Bend Country Club is now open for business.
The restaurant at the River Bend Country Club is now open for business.

After five months of renovations, one part of a popular country club is now open to customers with greens scheduled to open at the end of the month.

The Grille at the River Bend Country Club opened its doors to customers on Sept. 19. The country club is located at 94 Shoreline Drive.

The country club was purchased by Carlos Melo in May of this year and is managed by Karl Thurber who was a previous co-owner with Larry Godwin. The business was purchased for $875,000, according to the Craven County Register of Deeds.

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Melo is also the owner of Minnesott Golf & Country Club in Pamlico County and Brandywine Bay Golf Club in Carteret County, which is also managed by Thurber.

Over the past five months, Thurber and his staff have worked steadily to renovate the golf course, pro shop and the grille area.

"Normally something like this would take about a year," Thurber said. "We're excited that we were able to get it done in five months."

Thurber said the golf course and pro shop will officially open on Oct. 1.

"That will be our big opening day," he said. "We have added a new irrigation pump system, Tif Eagle greens and renovated the clubhouse. We have done a lot here in the past five months."

TifEagle is a very fine-textured dwarf bermudagrass that recovers more quickly from mechanical injury, has better color, and is extremely cold-hardy. It is drought-tolerant and disease-resistant.

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Plans to open the pool have been delayed to next year.

"We were hoping to open it for a few weeks in September," Thurber said. "We are doing a major overhaul to the pool and it probably would take another month or so to complete and it will be too cold by then so we have pushed the opening until Memorial Day of next year."

The hours for the restaurant are 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday, 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

A website for the location is not complete, but Thurber said he expects it to be up and running fairly soon.

For more information, call 252-494-9192 or visit them on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Sun Journal: River Bend Golf and Country Club have official opening date