re: Assault on Historic City Park Golf Course

All are welcome.

You and more than 28,000 others enjoyed historic City Park Golf Course last year, yet BREC's high-priced planner/designer Sasaki calls it a "passive space." They don't say who will maintain the space if golf goes away; they just expect BREC to absorb the loss of golf revenues.

Would love if someone could record and upload a video of the meeting, considering it looks like there might not be video for this one.

How’s this for seeking public input?
At BREC’s special meeting of the City Park Steering Committee, the committee was placed in one room — and the public was placed in a separate room, watching on a screen, unable to ask a single question.
Meanwhile, major issues went unaddressed.
Most importantly: why BREC is considering a conservancy model that would roll City Park into the failing University Lakes Project, even though BREC doesn’t own any of the Lakes.
A process that separates the public from the decision makers, limits participation, and avoids basic governance questions is not a public process.
City Park deserves better than that.

They did that with War Memorial park in Little Rock several years ago. Closed a very popular executive type course adjacent to the football stadium to plan a “green space” public park.
To date, nothing has happened and the course is overgrown and useless for anything.
Beware of their “good intentions “

What a cluster frick. What are they afraid of? Looking the public in the eye?

Thanks!

This situation with City Park and BREC is so depressing. I moved away from BR in 1989, but back in the day I played at Webb, City Park, Briarwood and Fairwood CC. When I visited, I seemed to recall playing SM a couple of times. And enjoyed every minute of it on all of the courses. Sad to see the state of affairs, especially with City Park.

A few years back I became a follower of No Layin Up because of the Strapped story on City Park. I wonder what Randy and Neal & all of NLU would think of the shenanigans going on to basically shut it down.

Thanks to all of you fighting to keep CP and improve BREC's handling of local golf.

IIRC the survey or at least some documentation associated talked about runoff from the golf course affecting the lake. “Ecology” may be a way for the back room people to get their conclusion.

Never mind that on several occasions I’ve seen private yard service groups dumping grass clippings directly into the lake near the interstate overpass. This wasn’t lately but did occur at the time of the last algae bloom. I’m not alone in this. A neighbor yelled at the workers and they were clueless that it was wrong.

J.R. Ball is at it again, spreading falsehoods and myths about Historic City Park and its century-old golf course. In today’s version of his Red Eye e-letter, he writes:
“The traditional 18-hole, four-hour municipal round is fading (or 9-hole in City Park's case). What's replacing it doesn't look like a golf course—it looks like a lighted par-3 with a bar attached, food trucks, a social scene and a $25 green fee. That format is drawing younger demographics in Austin, Phoenix and a dozen other cities where recreational golf was supposed to be dying.”
What Ball wrote is rhetorically slick but empirically hollow. National data show:
• Municipal golf rounds have increased for four consecutive years.
• Public golf is the strongest segment of the golf industry.
• BREC’s rounds are up, not down.
• City Park hosted 28,200 rounds last year — a 9 hole course with that volume is not “fading.”
J.R. Ball’s take on City Park golf is pure fiction dressed up as analysis. Municipal golf isn’t “fading” — it’s growing nationally, BREC’s rounds are up, and City Park did 28,200 rounds last year.
That’s not a dying model. That’s a busy public course.
His whole argument is based on Austin and Phoenix, which have nothing to do with Baton Rouge. If you want a lighted par 3 with a bar and food trucks, go to Austin. Don’t bulldoze a century old municipal course that thousands of people actually use.
And the survey he keeps quoting? It wasn’t scientific. It didn’t measure real usage. BREC’s actual visitation data shows City Park is already dominated by passive use — with golf still there.
Bottom line: Ball is trying to import a trendy entertainment golf concept into a park that already works. Baton Rouge doesn’t need to be Austin. It needs to keep the public assets people actually use.

They could light up city park and add a bar and food trucks and top 50K rounds a year