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More Americans Are Giving Up Golf
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Paul Vitello
New York Times
2/28/2008
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.
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City Park poised for cash infusion
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N.O. would divert tax dollars for work
Bruce Eggler
Times Picayune
2/29/2008
In a move to promote the redevelopment of storm-ravaged City Park, a New Orleans City Council committee agreed Thursday to a plan under which the city will let the park have as much as $3 million in sales tax revenue that otherwise would go to the city.
The plan for a City Park tax increment financing district was endorsed by the Budget Committee and is almost certain to win passage by the full council next week.
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Out of floodwaters, a better City Park is emerging
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Confirming that an expansion of the golf course land area was in the works
Frank Donze
Times Picayune
2/9/2008
Signs of renewal are everywhere at City Park.
Work crews are putting finishing touches on a remodeled concession stand inside the shuttered Casino building. Heavy equipment is rumbling across battered fairways of the north golf course, preparing for a late-spring reopening. New bleachers are going up at Pan American Stadium.
Visitors soon will see more: a new -- and far bigger -- Ferris wheel at the amusement park, a rebuilt tennis complex, sidewalk repairs, new landscaping near the New Orleans Museum of Art and a massive replanting of Couturie Forest.
By mid-2009, access to the park also should improve as road repairs proceed along Marconi Drive, Wisner Boulevard and Harrison Avenue.
Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina flooding left City Park a tattered wasteland, New Orleans' high-profile swath of green space is experiencing a revival. The flurry of building and repair projects is unlike anything the 1,300-acre park has seen since a massive work force dug lagoons and built bridges and buildings during the Depression, turning City Park into a regional attraction.
"There is no doubt that the park has never had this level of infrastructure and project investment since that time," City Park Director Bob Becker said.
Now the park's recovery is shifting into high gear, with administrators having assembled nearly $70 million in federal, state, city and philanthropic dollars to finance dozens of projects, a good-news tale that will get attention during a news conference scheduled for Monday. Becker said he also hopes to announce more work in the months ahead as the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues its evaluation -- and private dollars continue to roll in.
The park's signature long-term project is the replacement of the ruined east and west golf courses with a state-of-the-art golf complex, one worthy of hosting professional tournaments. The golf development, still facing scrutiny by City Park's board, has been proposed by the nonprofit Bayou District Foundation.
It would be part of a bold $240 million effort to build mixed-income housing, two charter schools and a YMCA center at the site of the soon-to-be-demolished St. Bernard public housing complex, just across Bayou St. John.
Even if the Bayou District plan, modeled after a revamped public housing site east of Atlanta, never becomes reality, the park has about $14.5 million in hand for a more modest golf restoration agenda that calls for renovating the east course and building a new clubhouse.
  10.parkmap1.pdf
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