Andy Murray posted the news himself on Facebook the afternoon of June 27. Today would be the last day Murray Bros. Caddyshack was open. Come by, have a drink, say goodbye. That night the restaurant had live music from Mike K. and a crowd that had been showing up for a quarter century, since Andy and his brothers, including Bill Murray, opened the place in 2001 as a tribute to the golf comedy that made their family famous. No reason was given for the closure. The restaurant's food service license was already listed as delinquent with an expiration date of June 1, though nobody from Caddyshack confirmed why.
For anyone who lives near World Golf Village, the closure landed differently than a typical restaurant shutting down. Caddyshack was not just a place to watch The Players Championship on a big screen with a wedge salad. At more than 8,000 square feet, it was World Golf Village's longest continuously operated tenant, the last name-brand business still standing from the community's original vision. Its exit did not open a debate about what comes next. It closed one that has been going on for three years, and the answer has almost nothing to do with St. Johns County government.
The Building Next Door Has Been Empty Longer
Caddyshack's closing did not happen in isolation. It happened at the tail end of a slower unraveling that started in June 2023, when the World Golf Foundation notified the county it planned to move the World Golf Hall of Fame out of St. Johns County entirely, back to its original home in Pinehurst, North Carolina. The Hall of Fame shut its doors in 2023. The attached IMAX theater, at nearly 18,000 square feet, followed in 2024. PGA Tour Productions, the last major tenant with a name recognizable outside of St. Johns County, relocated its operation to the PGA Tour's headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach around the same window.
By the time Caddyshack served its last wedge salad, it was closing inside a campus where the anchor tenant had already left for another state, the movie theater had gone dark, and the production studio had moved forty minutes north. Caddyshack wasn't the first loss. It was the last one standing.
Whose Empty Building Is This, Actually
Here is where most explanations stop short. It is easy to assume that a public body that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars maintaining a vacant building must also control what happens to it. St. Johns County does own the Hall of Fame building and the IMAX theater outright, along with the surrounding parking lots and common areas, after paying $5.5 million in April 2024 to buy the roughly 36.7 acres that once belonged to the World Golf Foundation. County Administrator Joy Andrews put the annual maintenance cost for the property near $400,000, even scaled back with the building unused.
Ownership is not the same thing as authority to redevelop. The land underneath World Golf Village was never fully unencumbered. When the original developer, now known as IT Land Associates LLC, sold the founding acreage to the World Golf Foundation back in 1996 for a symbolic $100, both sides agreed to a covenant restricting the property to golf and sports related development for fifty years. That clock runs through 2046. It does not reset when the county buys the buildings sitting on top of it, and it does not care whether the Hall of Fame is still inside them.
What a Judge Decided on August 3
The World Golf Foundation tried to get out from under that restriction this year, arguing in circuit court that the covenant was strangling the land's marketability now that the Hall of Fame, the IMAX, and PGA Tour Productions had all left. On August 3, St. Johns County Circuit Judge R. Lee Smith ruled against them, upholding the use restrictions through 2046. IT Land's legal team had argued that a lack of economic viability was not a legally sufficient reason to void a deal both parties struck in 1996, and the judge agreed.
That ruling is not yet a month old as of this writing, and the clock on it is still moving. The foundation has fifteen days from the ruling to request a rehearing and thirty days to file an appeal, which puts the appeal deadline right around the first days of September, just days from now. Whether an appeal gets filed will decide if this fight goes another round or if the county and its partners finally get a settled answer about what the land can legally become.
Two Redevelopment Concepts Already Waiting in Line
The frozen legal status has not stopped developers from pitching what they would build if the covenant question resolves in their favor. St. Johns County commissioners voted in September 2025 to advance two competing concepts into a deeper review phase rather than choose between them outright.
One, called Golftopia, comes from Capital Group P3 Developments out of Boca Raton, led by developer Mario Caprini. It leans directly into the covenant's language, proposing renovations to the IMAX and Hall of Fame buildings alongside mini golf courses, a VR golf lounge, outdoor seating, play zones, and a wellness spa, structured around a 32-year master lease and a 30-year sublease with an operator called Alchemy Attractions. Its proposed construction window runs from July 2026 through November 2029.
The other, the Fountains at World Golf Village, comes from Ergisi Acquisitions and Cross Regions Real Estate, the same team that built the Fountains at St. Johns a few miles up County Road 210. That project has already filled its storefronts with tenants like JaxSpice, the Dolly Llama Waffle Master, Scenthound, and Salon Honey + Sage, proof that the team knows how to lease up a mixed-use center in this part of the county quickly. Whether that retail-forward formula survives a legal review built around the words golf, entertainment, and ancillary uses is the open question. Golftopia's concept maps onto the covenant's language more directly, which may matter more than either developer's track record once the appeal window closes.
The Ring Around the Frozen Middle
What makes the standoff feel strange to anyone driving through the area is that almost nothing else nearby looks stuck. A Buc-ee's, a Costco, and a Bass Pro Shops already anchor the roads around World Golf Village, and more is coming. In February 2026, Fort Lauderdale-based Stiles Retail Group closed on 487 acres at the World Commerce Center along International Golf Parkway for $45 million, and a Taco Bell proposal is already moving through county review on 93 of that site's developable acres. A few hundred yards away, Chick-fil-A is pursuing a location on a future Walmart Supercenter outparcel on the same corridor, its fourth in St. Johns County.
The area is not shrinking. It is filling in on every side of a 36.7-acre parcel that has been legally locked in place since a contract signed three decades ago, back when the World Golf Hall of Fame was the reason anyone came to this part of St. Johns County at all.
What Comes Next, and When
The county's own statement after the August ruling hinted at a path that does not require waiting out the covenant. According to the county, one of the affected property owners intends to acquire the remaining World Golf Village development rights directly from IT Land Associates, which would settle the question by ownership rather than by further litigation. If that deal comes together, the county has said residents could see a formal redevelopment proposal within 45 to 60 days of the ruling, putting a realistic timeline somewhere between mid-September and early October 2026.
For now, the appeal deadline in the first days of September is the next real marker to watch. Whichever way it goes, the story of World Golf Village right now is not a county sitting on its hands. It is a fifty-year-old handshake finally getting tested in court, with two developers, a Boca Raton entertainment group, and a fast-growing retail team all waiting to see who gets to answer for it.
If you are watching how this corner of St. Johns County is changing and want a local read on what it means for the neighborhoods around it, from Nocatee to St. Augustine, Campanaro Group has been tracking Northeast Florida's growth corridors for almost two decades. Reach out any time you want a straight answer about what is actually happening in this part of the county, not just what a headline says.
