City Park New Orleans

Among the many stories coming out of the PGA Championship that ended Sunday at the Atlanta Athletic Club was a brickbat flung by one of the prominent touring pros: “Modern architecture is killing the game.”

That’s what Phil Mickelson, winner of four major championships, said. Not for the first time, Mickelson was being critical of course-designer Rees Jones, who has designed championship layouts around the world. It was Jones who renovated AAC in 2006 for this year’s major championship, and, of course, for AAC members, as well. Which is where Mickelson took aim.

“The course is great for the PGA Championship, but it’s not great for the membership,” he said.

I bring this up only because the course being designed for City Park’s post-Katrina golf comeback is in the hands of Rees Jones, Inc., a layout City Park officials said will offer “a high-end golf experience and will be challenging for every type of golfer.”

My main question: How challenging will it be for the public golfer, the average Joe?

By most accounts, the ongoing recovery at New Orleans' City Park from an estimated $43 million in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina has been remarkable, as beloved attractions return better than ever and flashy, new ones come on line.

The lone pothole on the park's comeback trail has been the inability of administrators to close a deal with private investors on a proposed championship golf course.

Add a soccer pavilion to the growing list of new attractions popping up all over City Park.

As City Park marks the completion of the latest enhancements to its popular Big Lake attraction Tuesday, officials are looking ahead to the next phase: a boathouse featuring a small waterfront restaurant.

With an eye toward closing a long-discussed deal with a golf developer in the next few months, the City Park Improvement Association gave its unanimous approval Tuesday to a scaled-down plan that reduces by 20 percent the land set aside for a proposed championship course.

New Orleans' premier public tennis venue, rooted on Victory Avenue in the heart of City Park for more than a century, is moving.

On Thursday morning, park officials will cut the ribbon at their new $3.9 million tennis complex on a once-dormant tract along Marconi Drive between Harrison Avenue and Interstate 610. The City Park/Pepsi Tennis Center, which features 26 courts and a clubhouse, is the latest in a string of flashy attractions that are altering the face of the urban playground that was left in ruins after Hurricane Katrina.

A painstaking push to restore City Park’s storm-battered golf complex appears to be nearing an end as officials consider a scaled-down version they hope will lead to a long-term management agreement for a proposed championship course.

The revised plan — which scuttles a 9-hole course and reduces from 310 acres to 250 acres the space needed for the new, 18-hole layout — is scheduled to go before the City Park board of commissioners on March 22.

As City Park continues to study an ambitious proposal from a private developer to overhaul its storm-battered golf complex between Interstate 610 and Filmore Avenue, officials are ready to go it alone on a smaller version of the game.

Construction is slated to start in March on a $1.2 million miniature golf complex along Victory Avenue across from Storyland and the popular children's amusement park.

Though the plan is not yet definite, the Louisiana Children's Museum has raised about $7 million for a potential move to City Park, an ambitious project that would drastically expand the museum and its programs.

Tentatively slated to break ground in 2012 and open in 2014, the new location in the park, called the Early Learning Village, would be twice the size of the museum's Warehouse District building. It would take advantage of the park setting and bring community resources together to assist parents and entertain children.

In the meantime, City Park has reserved a site of about 10 acres not far from the New Orleans Museum of Art and near Roosevelt Mall.

Our championship-level golf course on the west bank has flopped, requiring close to $30 million in taxpayer subsidies over the last few years, but are we discouraged?

No, sir. The way we figure it, if one PGA-style course proves ruinous, the best way to make a bunch of money is to build another one, this time in City Park.

Mr. Micawber would approve of the business plan. Park commissioners must figure something will turn up, because, having received three proposals, they have given the nod to one with a budget that exceeds the available cash by $9 million.

Five years after City Park embraced an ambitious overhaul of its storm-battered golf complex, officials are preparing to begin formal negotiations with the Bayou District Foundation, a New Orleans nonprofit group that wants to build and manage the proposed 18-hole championship course, clubhouse and driving range between Interstate 610 and Filmore Avenue.

District A
Tuesday, March 30th, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
City Park - Timken Center (old casino building) on Dreyfous Dr.
Parkview Terrace, 2nd floor

The New Orleans City Council, in coordination with the City Planning Commission, will hold public meetings in each Council District in an effort to inform and engage the public on the Master Plan, according to a press release from the council.

The council's Recovery Committee co-chairs, Cynthia Willard-Lewis and Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson, have scheduled the meetings from March 18-30. The public meetings will be held throughout New Orleans in each Council District.

Link to nola.com article

While the meeting may be dominated by the current threat to Audubon Park, also in District A, it is critical that all citizens continue their input into the "parks and open space" goals that are part of the new Master Plan.

For more documents and resources on the New Orleans Master Plan, visit the website.

In July 2009, attorney Michael Tifft filed suit against the City Park Improvement Association for violating the state's Open Meetings Law with regards to the May 26, 2009 meeting at which the 35-member Board of Directors of the CPIA unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing its staff to draft a RFP for golf courses in City Park, without any apparent or open public discussion among the Board members. Members of the public present at the May 26 public meeting were denied the opportunity to comment.

Further, the suit accused the Board of specifically avoiding open meeting law requirements by being briefed separately beforehand in small groups by the staff, in order to insure a unanimous vote without public discussion at the meeting.

"New Orleans developers also hope that the community can closely follow the East Lake model, although an arrangement with City Park and its golf courses is not yet complete, according to developers. The developers noted they had responded last month to a solicitation from the park, and they hope the golf course will provide an economic engine for their Bayou District efforts. They estimate the development will cost $430 million, $300 million of it devoted to housing."