The City Park Board of Commissioners is getting closer to issuing a request for proposals on developing a $24 million golf complex in the 1,500-acre park. City Park CEO Bob Becker outlined the RFP to the park board Tuesday and said it will be reviewed a final time before the request is issued.

"I expect that it will be done shortly," Becker said Wednesday.

The City Park board in late May approved changes to the park's master plan that cleared the way for a redeveloped golf facility. City Park has in hand about $15.5 million to pay for Phase I -- $5.9 million in FEMA reimbursements and $9.65 million from state capital outlay. The nonprofit Bayou District Foundation is said to be raising approximately $9 million in private money to cover the remaining costs of the project and is expected to make that bid when the RFP is issued.

BATON ROUGE -- The Legislature is poised to sign off on a $9.2 million bailout of the financially struggling Tournament Players Club Louisiana golf course near Avondale on top of the $18.4 million the state has poured into the private project in the past decade.

Among the factors driving the deal is a clause in an old contract that could allow the 250-acre site to revert to the private donors of the land unless the course is maintained by professional golf tournament operators.

Proponents of the deal have pitched it as a money-saver for the state, a conclusion they reached by assuming that the current state subsidy would expand over a seven-year period at a cost of $14.6 million. But the current subsidy, which has been widely criticized, is expiring this year and no such obligation exists for that cost-saving comparison.

Congratulations to Friends of New Orleans City Park for winning the $50,000 Greater Outdoors Project grant from Redwood Creek wines and Planet Green! Go to www.blazethetrail.com/greatoutdoors/ for more information on the organization’s Couturie Forest restoration project. Also, look for Friends of New Orleans City Park to be featured in a Redwood Creek advertising campaign later this year. We’ll track progress of the project on BlazeTheTrail.com, so be sure to check there from time to time for updates!

To me, it was a case of good news followed by bad news, not that the bad news wasn't anticipated.

One moment our sporting public is cheering a vote by NFL owners to send a 10th Super Bowl to our town.

A few days later, we learned, by a vote of 36-0, City Park's Board of Commissioners OK'd the building of a "championship" golf course on real estate that long has served as home for the public golfer.

If you happened to live here, it was easy to cheer the first vote.

But the second vote?

I'll put it this way: Assuming you had "affordable" greens fees in mind for the public golfers of this area, not fees in the neighborhood of $75 to play 18 holes, building a "championship" golf course in City Park makes no sense.

Because it makes sense only if you want to turn City Park into a version of City Park Country Club.

Despite constant objections from about a dozen opponents Tuesday, the City Park Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to add to its master plan a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the park's golf complex.

The 36-member Board of Commissioners, which convened for its monthly meeting at the Botanical Gardens in the Pavilion of Two Sisters, decided to go along with Phase I of the project.

Phase I would cost about $24.5 million and would include construction of an 18-hole championship course designed by Rees Jones, a renovated North Course, a clubhouse and parking, a driving range, range clubhouse and maintenance facility. It would be built between Interstate 610 and Filmore Avenue, with completion expected by fall of 2011 or in 2012.

On a humid afternoon, with kids and parents pouring into City Park as they often do, the City Park Board of Commissioners took their assigned seats around a rectangular table in a cool, simple room. Those of us in attendance without place cards, felt, or should have felt, another sweet breath of recovery air blow.

It was just a whisper, a gentle solitary whisper of the winds of progress.

Golf is a tradition that's been part of City Park for more than 80 years. The sport raises revenue for the park -- more than $6 million a year -- but now the governor is looking to cut a chunk of the park's funding.

That's left park administrators scrambling to find a way to make more money, and the City Park Improvement Association agreed Tuesday to add another golf course to the park.

In a unanimous vote, the City Park board has approved changes to the park's master plan that make way for the initial phase of a $45 million golf facility. The vote gives City Park the green light to put out a request for proposals to develop the course.

The board's resolution officially starts the $24 million first phase of the project. City Park has $15 million to put toward that phase and is seeking a partner to help pay for the development.

“I think it’s very clear the board has considered all of the input, and I think they’re being stewards of what we need to do here,” City Park CEO Bob Becker said after the vote.

So far, the Bayou District Foundation has been the sole party to express interest in the project, although Becker stressed that there is no pre-existing agreement with the group and that the request for proposals is open to anyone.

The BDF is handling the redevelopment of the nearby St. Bernard housing site, and its plans call far a recreational park facility to complement the mixed-income residential development it is building.

“It’s just another part of the process, and we’re glad to move forward,” said J.T. Hannan, the foundation’s director of public and governmental affairs. “We’ll be making proposals as part of the RFP.”

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Bayou District Foundation believes that City Park golf was an underutilized resource before Hurricane Katrina -- however, if the course is properly supported, it could become one of the finest public golf facilities in the United States.

As with so many other aspects of life in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina totally reconfigured the picture. City Park's golf courses were largely shattered. Irrigation, piping, electrical and sanitation facilities were all destroyed by the floodwaters of Katrina. Out of state contractors hacked up many of the golf courses oak trees and the courses were left with large gouges and craters where heavy equipment had settled.

Out of this mess, the Bayou District Foundation leadership saw an opportunity. What if City Park could combine some of its disaster relief funds with private dollars provided by Bayou District Foundation and create a world class public golf facility? This would solve the financing problem that vexed earlier efforts to improve golf in the park using only private funding and would advance golf in the Park far above what could have been done exclusively with existing FEMA funds (which by statute could only be used to restore golf in the park to pre storm conditions.)

From the Bayou District Foundation website: their private plan for our public park:

Bayou District Foundation's fundamental goal is to help create a city neighborhood that thrives from excellent housing, nearby high quality schools and retail services and abundant recreational resources for youth. Since the Bayou District borders the historic New Orleans City Park golf courses, as well as the park's many other recreation and youth sports amenities, the redevelopment of the park's dormant golf facilities, in particular, has become a committed objective of the Bayou District Foundation's recreational plan.

A friend of mine once gave me some excellent advice. He said "you can't make everyone happy, though you might try. If you're making everyone happy, there's a good chance you're not doing your job, you haven't taken a stand on anything -- and eventually everyone that you've tried to make happy will be unhappy with you."

I say all that to say this: When the City Park Board of Commissioners votes Tuesday, it should vote to accept the golfing portion of the park's master plan.

An ambitious $400 million plan is taking shape to transform the former St. Bernard housing development into mixed-income housing and the nearby City Park golf course into a championship-level course.

So far, $120 million is available for the project and construction has begun, with 466 of 1,325 mixed-income residences expected to be ready for residents to move in by November.

But the Bayou District Foundation, the group leading the development, still has several hurdles to clear before its plan can fully materialize. It still needs money for the remaining two-thirds of the project and the green light from City Park to overhaul the golf course.

And there’s the issue of how many former St. Bernard residents, displaced since Hurricane Katrina, will have access to the new homes.

The old St. Bernard public housing projects were located three blocks from City Park. By any measurement, St. Bernard residents didn’t regularly use park facilities. That should change dramatically if local developers have their way.

The Bayou District Foundation is the lead development partner for the former St. Bernard Housing Community. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans picked them for the job in 2007. The foundation broke ground on its first St. Bernard area housing project, Colombia Park, in December.

Colombia Park is the initial phase of a master-planned community within the St. Bernard complex that will feature mixed-use commercial and mixed-income residential buildings.

But the foundation has grander plans than just some innovative replacement for the old St. Bernard public housing projects.

Following a master plan similar to one that’s worked out well for developers and residents in Atlanta, the foundation wants to see the City Park golf courses redeveloped and an economic commitment to the surrounding area.

The vote by the City Park Board of Commissioners concerning the fate of the new golf courses at the park will come in May, said Gerry Barousse, head of the Bayou District Foundation at a press conference at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans on Wednesday.

The Bayou District Foundation, a Louisiana non-profit, has submitted a complete $46 million overhaul of the park's golf and recreational facilities to the City Park board, headed by Bob Becker.

MARK WILLIAMS: Gentlemen, if you could talk about your foundation. Start with you, Gerry, and give us an explanation and some information, and we can just open it up and have a discussion, that would be great. I'd appreciate it.

GERRY BAROUSSE: My foundation was created after Katrina, based on the invitation that was provided to us by some folks in Atlanta to come visit East Lake and what had been done in Atlanta at East Lake. The redevelopment of a former public housing project, the reincarnation of East Lake Golf Club, and schools and community that were really centered around golf, and how golf was able to change public housing and really influence what happened there in Atlanta. Ultimately, it has become a model across Atlanta and across the U.S.

Charlie Yates who was an executive with Zurich, and long time friend of mine, invited us up. He and Mike Rodrigue, who is with me here, and Gary Solomon and I, all had been acquaintances. And he wanted us to come see what had happened in East Lake.

When we were able to see the influence of what mixed income housing had done there, what golf was able to help influence, and what happened with the redevelopment of the schools in that community and the overall impact, we said this is something we want to make happen in New Orleans.