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Picking up a save
Passionate residents are stepping forward to save their local golf courses from extinction.
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An article in a local newspaper caught the attention of residents of Glenmont, N.Y., and ultimately saved the community’s golf course, Colonial Acres GC, from being sold to real estate developers. |
Earlier this year, the National Golf Foundation issued a press release about the state of the golf industry, and the news wasn’t great.
Over the last five years, the golf industry — as measured by the number of golf courses operating in the United States — has remained stagnant. And in the last three years, the news is worse; 2007 marked the third straight year that the number of golf course closures outpaced new course openings. With the nation’s economy also showing signs of strain, that trend isn’t likely to reverse in the immediate future.
According to NGF, golf courses are closing not because of basic business failure, but rather because of “higher and better economic use of land.” Typically, that shift in economic use transitions from golf to real estate development. And just which courses are closing? By and large, one segment of the golf course industry is bearing a disproportionate burden of the closures: nontraditional facilities. Nontraditional facilities are defined as nine-hole, executive and par-3 courses. More often than not, they’re mom-and-pop courses operating on the brink of profitability. Though they account for just 20 percent of the golf courses in the U.S., they accounted for 43 percent of the closures in 2007.
It’s a sad sequence of events for the communities in which these courses operate. Such courses are local gems, prized by the residents that live in the areas that surround them. But it’s not just about communities losing golf courses. It’s about superintendents losing their jobs. It’s about communities losing their green space. It’s about residents losing a valued asset.
Not everyone is simply sitting back and letting this trend play itself out, however.
Some communities are taking a stand and stepping in to save their beloved golf courses from extinction. Just ask Pat Blum.
An assist from the press
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Superintendent Pat Blum says his environmental work is about building a future for his children, Samantha, 12, and Zach, 6. |
Over the last decade, Blum has emerged as a leading eco-crusader for the golf industry generally, and for the superintendent profession specifically. Blum was born into the superintendent profession. His father was the first superintendent at Wayne Hills Country Club in Lyons, N.Y., outside of Rochester. The Blum family had the only house on the golf course, and Pat started working there at age 8, making $15 per week raking bunkers, weeding and doing other small tasks. He hung around until 1989, when he graduated from the State University of New York, Delhi, with a dual degree in turfgrass management and landscape design. After four years in landscaping, the seven-year GCSAA member arrived at Colonial Acres Golf Course in Glenmont, N.Y., outside of Albany, and he’s been there ever since.
Colonial Acres is exactly the type of nontraditional golf course that owners typically sell in favor of real estate. It’s a nine-hole, par-3 course set on roughly 33 acres. It gets about 15,000 rounds per year. Originally built as part of an adjacent housing development that shares the same name, the course was first operated by the neighborhood homeowners association, and then bought out by a group of 18 local homeowners. By the end of the 2005 golf season, however, those owners were looking to sell. Worrisome to area residents, a builder had its eye on the property with the idea of putting more houses on it.
Coincidental timing proved fortuitous. Blum was walking the golf course with a reporter from The Spotlight, a local community newspaper. The reporter was focusing on Blum’s environmental accomplishments, which are numerous: overall winner of the Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards, the New York State Governor’s Award for Pollution Prevention and the U.S. EPA’s Environmental Performance Track Program Outreach Award, to name just three.
As Blum and the reporter walked the fairways, he explained how his two children — daughter, Samantha, age 12, and son, Zach, age 6 — were his inspiration. “My environmental work here at Colonial Acres is totally about building a stronger future for them,” he explained, “and this is the only way I know how to do it.” Then Blum dropped a bombshell. “But this could be the end.”
He went on to explain the impending sale and potential building of houses on the golf course. The situation had become so dire that course owners had pulled Blum’s funding for GCSAA membership for two full years in advance of the potential sale, despite Blum’s national environmental award from the organization and his active involvement in GCSAA committees.
When the article appeared in The Spotlight later that week, the community was incredulous. “People in the area took notice,” Blum explains today. “The golf course has become an environmental icon, but it was ready to be plowed under. Yet, there was already a lot of building going on in the area, and this was the perfect green space. The idea became, ‘Let’s protect the golf course and keep it forever green.’”
Residential aide
The owners, it turned out, didn’t want to see the golf course become a complex of streets and houses either, but they needed to sell. Blum, the owners and area residents looked to their local government — the town of Bethlehem, N.Y. — to save Colonial Acres. Town supervisor Terry Egan (and then Jack Cunningham, after he took that office following the most recent election) was fully supportive, but the town didn’t have the budget to buy the course. Fortuitously, though, one of the local residents who had seen the newspaper article was Joe Martens.
Martens lived about a mile from Colonial Acres and had played the course many times with his son. He also happened to be the president of the Open Space Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that “protects scenic, natural and historic landscapes to ensure public enjoyment, conserve habitats and sustain community character.” In other words, Colonial Acres was right up OSI’s alley.
And it wouldn’t be the first time OSI had stepped in to save a golf course. Some 15 years ago, OSI purchased a property in Garrison, N.Y., in the mid-Hudson Valley across from West Point. The 71-acre lowland portion of the property — Arden Point — was donated to New York State Parks and became part of Hudson Highlands State Park. The upland portion of the property was and is Highlands Country Club, a golf course and historic restaurant currently owned by OSI but leased to a private operator.
OSI bought Colonial Acres via its New York Land Program, which to date has protected more than 100,000 acres throughout the state. The purchase price was $940,000. Empire State Development, an arm of the New York state government, kicked in a $375,000 grant to help out. OSI officially closed on the purchase of Colonial Acres in August 2007, and then immediately turned around and leased it to the town of Bethlehem for $1 per year. Now, the town’s parks and recreation department manages the course while providing for other activities on the property outside of golf season — birding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing.
“Everyone has been very pleased,” says Nan Lanahan, administrator for Bethlehem’s parks and recreation department. “It’s been nothing but positive for the community.”
Executive escape
Hop on the New York State Thruway near Colonial Acres, and then head three hours to the west to Pat Blum’s hometown region of Rochester, and you’ll drive almost smack into Executive South Family Golf and Recreation Center, an eerily similar case of a nontraditional golf course, prized by the community, that has undergone many of the same twists and turns as Colonial Acres.
Executive South is located in Henrietta, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester and a community of contrasts. On the one hand, you have big box retail (think Target, Best Buy, Home Depot) and oodles of restaurant franchises. But you also find quaint residential neighborhoods and vast acreage of currently unprotected open space and vacant farmland. On the western edge of town, the Genesee River flows north into the Great Lakes. It’s a community with a growing eco-consciousness (the Tinker Nature Park and Hansen Nature Center are the newest prides of the town), and a need for family-friendly golf, a role filled by Executive South.
The present day golf course got its start in 1993, when it opened under the ownership of Charlie Lookup, a local engineer. Executive South was formerly a golf course and recreation center, but it went bankrupt and out of business, and the property sat idle. Then, in 1991 and 1992, Lookup arrived with bulldozers and a plan for a newly-designed golf course. Executive South opened for the 1993 season on 25 acres, with a nine-hole, par-3 setup that drew a consistent 10,000 rounds per year.
Over the years, Executive South became much more than just a local golf course. It became a genuine part of the community. Youth and families played the course. Seniors played. The business crowd played during lunch or in the afternoon. Two adaptive carts allowed the Rochester Rehabilitation Center to bring people with physical disabilities to play. The course hosted the annual Special Olympics golf tournament.
Then, in 2003, a familiar beast reared its ugly head — owner Charlie Lookup was looking to sell, and houses and condos built atop the golf course seemed the direction things were going. Superintendent Jeff Towner — a member of the Finger Lakes Association of Golf Course Superintendents — was concerned.
“I started here as assistant superintendent in 1994 and became superintendent in 1999,” he says. “I’m from this area. We were all worried it was going to become something other than a golf course.”
Local foundation
Fortunately, the Henrietta Foundation became Executive South’s unlikely champion. Formed in 2000 as an all-volunteer nonprofit, the foundation is dedicated to “preserving and protecting Henrietta’s scenic, natural resources for public benefit.” The foundation’s earliest endeavors involved more traditional open-space protection. During its first major project, undertaken in 2004, it converted the old Lehigh Valley Railroad grade into what has become the community’s most prized recreational path. Shortly thereafter, the foundation began acquiring wetlands and woodlands, totaling 22 acres to date, most adjacent to the Lehigh Valley Trail.
Traditional or not, the plight of Executive South fit right in with the foundation’s mission. In 2005, the Henrietta Foundation lobbied the state of New York for assistance, arguing that Executive South amounted to valuable green space and recreational land for the town of Henrietta. New York State’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation agreed and made a $300,000 matching grant during the 2006 cycle of its Environmental Protection Fund. That financial support allowed the Foundation to buy the golf course for $590,000, all inclusive. But unlike OSI and the town of Bethlehem, the Henrietta Foundation would not only own the property, it would also operate the golf course. The foundation officially signed off on Executive South in December 2007.
Since then, superintendent Towner and Henrietta’s residents have been overjoyed. To get a sense of just how important Executive South was and is to the community, just consider Bill Dykstra. Dykstra is a 30-year resident of Henrietta and retired in December 2005 after a long run as director of the town’s parks and facilities department. He was an active volunteer for the Henrietta Foundation, and when the issue of saving Executive South came up, Dykstra didn’t think twice. He came out of retirement to assume the role of project director (essentially, the general manager position) at the golf course, working 30 to 40 hours per week … as a volunteer.
Ultimately, though, for Dykstra the commitment is well worth it. Towner still has a job as a superintendent. The Rochester region still has a valuable piece of green space. And the residents of Henrietta still have their beloved golf course.
While these New York golf courses demonstrate those wonderful cases when communities care enough to save their local greens, nontraditional golf courses across the country continue to deal with the threat of closure in the face of real estate development pressures. But as the residents of Bethlehem and Henrietta have shown, when golf courses become a valued part of the community, closure isn’t the only option. When communities care, the future can be bright for these courses and the superintendents that manage them.
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