Below are comments Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association member David Muth sent to his neighborhood organization regarding the golf course in City Park prior to a public meeting held March 10, 2009. A decision could be made as early as March 24, when the City Park Board of Commissioners meets at the Pavilion of the Two Sisters. If approved, construction on Phase 1 of the project could begin this year.

March 10, 2009
Thanks for the heads up about the new City Park golf proposal. I went online to read it, and compare it to the 2005 Master Plan it will supersede.

One of the joys of City Park post-Katrina has been that the vast 400+ acre golf complex between I-610 and Robert E. Lee has been available as a public greenspace. For the first time since the former swamp was drained and cleared, people have been out walking, jogging, bike-riding, flying kites, birding, and picnicking as well as fishing in the formerly inaccessible lagoons. Public land used for a public purpose, instead of for the exclusive use of the tiny minority who play golf. Last year City Park re-opened the north course, closing everything between Filmore and Robert E. Lee once again to public use. But the golf area between 1-610 and Filmore has remained open. If you haven’t been out there, give it a visit. The paved golf cart trails are perfect for strolling or bike riding. Wildlife, especially birds, are everywhere.

We are not convinced that a single public meeting is sufficient to meet the requirements of law and policy when so important a matter as the scrapping of the 2005 Master Plan is being considered. A very large committment of state and federal dollars will be required to implement this plan, and a sufficient period of public debate and review is required. We ask the City Park Improvement Association to reject this proposal, or to require it to be revamped so that the loss of public recreational space, promised in the 2005 Master Plan, is compensated for by changes to the design of the golf plan. Any decision should wait for a period of real public review, and an unbiased analysis not driven by the inflated promises of developers.


Dear City Park Improvement Association:

The board of the one thousand member Orleans Audubon Society, representing National Audubon Society members from the fourteen parish area in southeast Louisiana, has reviewed the City Park Golf Master Plan by the Torre Design Consortium. We are writing today in response to the proposal to modify the March 29, 2005 New Orleans City Park Master Plan. The proposed changes to the existing Master Plan are unacceptable. Despite some modifications to the golfing plan presented at September 25, 2007 public meeting by the Bayou District Foundation, these changes are insufficient. We refer to the comments we sent on October 9, 2007 in response to that proposal.

I started playing golf in City Park in 1972. I had my first job in "the park" parking golf carts for Henry Thomas on the South Course when I was 13. I picked up range balls at the "new" Driving Range at 18, and became an assistant to Mr. Thomas at age 20. I ran the City Park Junior program from 1983, when we had a couple of dozen kids, to 1987, when we had a couple hundred. I have been an "Authorized Instructor" at the Driving Range since 1984, and I have traveled around the country extensively the last ten years teaching golf.

Question and subsequent discussion about this project that was posted on the GolfClubAtlas Discussion Group.

"Last fall, the forest's very existence was threatened when a proposal was made to upgrade the still-devastated golf facilities into tournament-quality courses. The forest would have become a clubhouse or parking area. Nothing puts a gleam in the eye of a developer more quickly than a bit of wild, unmanicured, brushy land. But the plans aroused a huge public outcry and a passionate defense of green space, and the idea has been abandoned."

It is not a little ironic that New Orleans, known to hordes of tourists for the canopies of ancient live oaks that line so many of its streets, is nearly devoid of good birding localities -- a stark contrast with many other urban areas.

The men gathered in a new golf clubhouse here a couple of weeks ago circled the problem from every angle, like caddies lining up a shot out of the rough.

“We have to change our mentality,” said Richard Rocchio, a public relations consultant.

“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”

William A. Gatz, owner of the Long Island National Golf Club in Riverhead, said the problem was fundamental economics: too much supply, not enough demand.

Re: "We can't just say no to changes," Other Opinions, Sept. 27.

Were there two different public meetings on City Park Tuesday night? The one I attended had the public speaking out in favor of change, in the form of the 2005 master plan. That plan proposes considerable change. However, the new development proposals trash that master plan.

I heard no one speak against bringing back golf. I did hear opposition to the proposed layout and allotment of space.

When it comes to big changes, we're great at saying "no" here in New Orleans.

We're not so good at saying "yes" or even "maybe." We don't always open our collective minds to the possibility that different could actually be acceptable, if not better.

Look around. It shows.

In the age of video games and attention deficit disorder, "open space" is a dirty phrase. Open space in America's parks is being wiped out, revised, or populated by new structures and parking lots. Municipal officials, wrongly, tend to see it as a void that must be filled, "programmed" to amuse all comers. With the rise of bottom-up planning, community representatives now decide, ex cathedra, that in order for our parks to succeed, they must have ten "focal" points and "ten things to do at each focal point," to quote the website of the Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit in New York City.

Earlier this year, I visited several urban parks around the country: Rochester, N.Y.'s Seneca Park, Atlanta's Piedmont Park, and New Orleans' City and Audubon parks, among others. I found them under siege from a variety of culprits, including zoo expansions (proposed for both Rochester and New Orleans' Audubon); new parking lots (one is planned for Atlanta); and new "destination features," like a sculpture garden in New Orleans' City Park. These parks' collective plight left me dispirited and angry. When was it decided that strolling under a dappled canopy of trees, or over a sloping lawn, is not a sufficient experience in its own right? When did we stop valuing the sound of running water, the humanizing scale and tactile marvels of nature? Who still appreciates historic, moss-covered walls and paths or a landscape designer's choice of plants and ornaments?

[The developer of the East Lake Golf and Housing project in Atlanta explains why for-profit developers would be interested in repeating the "golf and public housing" model in cities like New Orleans... and how to encourage them to do so. Cousins, himself a golfer, had family ties to the East Lake Golf Club and bought the once-hallowed course in 1993 after its membership dwindled and its aging facilities fell into disrepair. The businessman spent more than $24 million buying and restoring the golf course and its old clubhouse, and then, in 1995, launched the East Lake Foundation to assemble money, plans and government help for the redeveloping the adjoining public housing complex.]

My intent today is to offer thoughts and suggestions on how to improve HUD's program of mixed-income housing. I hope the Commission will remember this testimony for three simple points. First, mixed-income housing works. It is certainly the best method I know of to transform devastated housing "projects" into truly safe and healthy "neighborhoods". Second, for the program to work on a large scale, it must be simplified and made more profitable for the private, for-profit developers that are essential to the program's success. And third, HUD must provide funding for effective social services that we believe are an essential part of every mixed-income development.