Bendelow

If BREC would invest in City Park the way it has in Clark, they might be able to raise fees a bit. But remember, BREC is public golf, and the fact that City Park more than pays for itself is a testament to its value.

BRAF wants to create a special taxing district there, but not for the golf course.
In 2025, City Park golf course generated a $75,000 surplus while keeping fees affordable or even "cheap." This year it is on track to host 30,000 rounds of golf, the estimated maximum capacity as reported by the National Golf Foundation. Alter the course substantially by removing the yardage equivalent of one hole and there is no telling how much play would be reduced, but as much as 50 percent has been suggested.

Polito and his design firm Sasaki claim their plans build around the existing course, but in fact their plan take 350 yards off and reduce par from 321 to 31. Taking 350 yards is like taking out an entire hole, and no one wants to play a chopped golf course like that.

Polito is trying to sound like a knowledgeable golf insider when in fact he knows or cares nothing about the beautiful, historic, City Park golf course, home to generations of Baton Rouge golfers for a hundred years.

There are two ways to kill off golf at City Park, and both are happening in the background.
1.Design it to death. Start shrinking holes, cutting into the footprint, or adding stuff that doesn’t belong on a golf course. Make it less playable, less attractive, and less viable. Slow motion kill.
2.Govern it to death. Put City Brooks into a conservancy with its own board and its own legislation. Once the public loses control, priorities shift and golf gets phased out over time. Structural kill.
People keep treating these as separate issues. They’re not. They’re two paths to the same outcome if nobody pushes back.
City Park Golf Course works. It’s affordable, historic, and heavily used. The public deserves a say before anything gets carved up or handed off.

Jenni Peters has often stated that she wants more of a "central park:" that everyone can use. But City-Brooks is already a central park, with numerous facilities and activities, and there is no guarantee that if the golf course disappears more people will visit City Park.
And once the course is gone, it is gone FOREVER.
"Don't it always seem to go . . .You don't know what you got till it's gone. . .They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot."--Joni Mitchell

City Park is on the National Register of Historic Places--among the first if not the first municipal course to be placed on the register, but that does not mean it "cannot be touched." It is a common supposition that properties on the register cannot be altered, but that is not the case.
If it is significantly altered, the way Sasaki proposes, the course will likely come off the register.

Yes, shrinking Webb would fit the pattern we’ve watched for five years. And let’s be honest: the holes east of College Drive are the kind of “flexible acreage” consultants love to convert into general-purpose park space. And Baton Rouge would not have a single 18-hole golf course.

If the BREC Commission votes to place City-Brooks Park into a conservancy, as Sasaki has proposed, it will transfer a valuable public property into a private conservancy. This is in contravention of state law governing transfers of public property and requiring an exchange of equal value. Gone would be transparency, accountability, and someone to talk to about issues.
I urge you to attend the public meeting at McKinley Alumni Center on Thursday, June 11, and raise your voice or fill out a card saying NO to a conservancy. Thank you for asking.

Yes, just think if they did at Webb what they are trying to do at City Park.

The condominium post was a direct reaction to Sasaki inviting real estate developers to participate in a steering committee session at the Knock Knock Children’s Museum. That invitation effectively expanded the steering committee without any authorization from the BREC Commission, and no minutes from that meeting were ever published.
That lack of transparency — and the disregard for state Open Meetings requirements — is one of the core issues City Park supporters are up against. I hear your point about tone and perception, and I agree that accuracy and discipline matter. But it’s also important to understand that very powerful forces are actively working to shift City Park into a private conservancy model. That cannot be allowed to happen.