The Bayou District Foundation's plan is to emulate the success of East Lake at the old St Bernard Housing Project, using City Park's public golf courses in place of the private East Lake Golf Club and the public Charlie Yates Golf Club. It would cost almost as much to play at the proposed new City Park Golf Course as it would at the private East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

To make sense of how a simple $21 million renovation of the existing golf courses in City Park morphed into a plan for a private non-profit foundation to take ownership of the public land through a 90-year lease and build a $46 million golf complex instead, one must start at the beginning, with Atlanta's East Lake Golf Club.

In 1993, developer Tom Cousins purchased the derelict East Lake Golf Club adjacent to the notorious East Lake Meadows housing project in Atlanta for $4.5 million, and invested $25 million into its renovation, with Rees Jones as the course architect.

In 1995, Cousins formed the East Lake Community Foundation (ELCF, now called East Lake Foundation) to partner with the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) on the redevelopment of the adjoining housing project into the mixed-income "Villages at East Lake" with the aid of a $33.5 million HUD HOPE VI grant, a public-private partnership similar to what happened here in New Orleans with the St Thomas Housing Project redevelopment in the late 1990's. The ELCF then went on to incorporate a charter school, a YMCA, a pre-school, and a First Tee program for young golfers, held at the Rees Jones designed Charlie Yates Golf Course, a public par 58, 18-hole course opened in 1998, and built within the East Lake community next door to the private East Lake Golf Club.

Below is an excerpt from a recent paper I've written on foundations and NGOs in post-Katrina N.O. It doesn't explain the BDF and FK!F entirely, but make no mistakes, these are not small organizations with limited budgets.

These are very powerful proxies for wealthy developers and other interests. They represent and instrumentally push the agenda of the local growth coalition. BDF is an extension of longstanding foundations with an interest in pushing up real estate values. The link to the Greater New Orleans Foundation (and by extension the Ford Foundation) places BDF in a long lineage of community redevelopment vehicles going all the way back to Chicago in the 1950s.

The Golf is not just about land values. It's a big favorite of the city's tourism and convention's businesses. A major PGA level tournament would mean many millions of dollars. Small tournaments would mean millions more. The cover story that we aren't supposed to mess with is that Fore!Kids will be giving money to little kiddies. But this is chump change. The real money will be generated by all of the hotel and services companies that will be feeding of the golf tournies.

Today's article in the Times Picayune illustrates that the battle to stop the over-development of City Park is far from over. In fact, the paper today seems to suggest that it is virtually a done deal, that City Park will have its TPC style pro golf course, and even declining golf use in the surrounding area will not stop it.

I'll tell what has the only chance of stopping this boondoggle: a grass roots movement that has a belief in egalitarian land use, a belief in smart environmentalism, and a belief that a nature park at City Park could attract monies, and people, and finance itself, and even make money for the park. My definition in egalitarian land use is the belief that public land is for everyone. Golf is not for everyone. One of the problems with the rather weak, opposition to current plans (weak because it isn't yet organized into a bona fide movement; actual opposition to this plan is strong though), is the lack of an alternative, a cohesive vision of what could be at the park.

The current and future visions for the park have been taken over by elite golf and private property interests who will stop at nothing to get the Zurich classic into the city. Take Bayou Foundation, one of the non-profit entities involved in pushing for this deal. Mike Rodrigue is described by the Picayune article as a key member of the Bayou District Foundation and a longtime member of Fore!Kids, which produces the Zurich Classic, currently staged in Marrero. Bayou Foundation pushed for the demolition of the St. Bernard Housing Development, not far from City Park, and it's redevelopment into so-called "mixed income housing". You might ask, what does housing have to do with golf?

Historically, Golf was the big earner for City Park, not surprising when you consider that four golf courses consumed over half of the park. One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the pending new golf course construction and management contract remains the money: specifically, how much will the park receive, and what happens if the glowing income projections for the new course fall short, as they have done so extremely at the Audubon Park Golf Course. We thought it appropriate to outline City Park Golf's historical income figures as a way to shed light on the numbers that any new contractor should be expected to meet or exceed.

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.

For three long years after the 2005 flood, City Park's golf complex, once New Orleans' main hub for affordable play, resembled a weed-choked Scottish moor, where even a bloodhound would struggle to find a ball.

With the September reopening of the park's North Course, however, golfers on many days have lined up three or four deep on the first tee, waiting to play the flat, workmanlike par-67 course, which still has its share of rough patches.

The course also has brought much-needed revenue to the park -- it cleared, for instance, a $22,000 profit in January, outpacing a projected loss of $8,000, its managers say -- even as an ambitious plan for a far more upscale golf complex has marched forward.

In Louisiana, the average rounds played in all of 2008, in an odd coincidence, exactly matched those played in 2007, at 21,293 for both years. In 2007 and 2008, the TPC Louisiana course saw more than 26,000 rounds played each year.

State Sen. John Alario, D-Westwego, who was instrumental in the TPC Louisiana taking up residence near Bayou Segnette State Park in his home district, said the course's original business plan did not factor in a failing economy and might have overestimated the city's lure as a golfing destination.

"They figured there would be enough conventions in town where it would work to get those people in here to play," Alario said. "But tourism is way down, and the TPC Louisiana has not been the overwhelming success we had hoped it would be."


One recent day at the newly minted Lakewood golf course, director Brad Weaver stood outside a temporary clubhouse as workers put the final touches on the course's $9 million renovation, complete with a sand bunker shaped like a fleur-de-lis.

The upscale course is the first piece to a $200 million puzzle that ultimately will include a new clubhouse, golf villas for tourists, condos and retail. Weaver laid out Lakewood's niche in the local golf scene.

"We're cheaper than TPC Louisiana and more than Stonebridge," Weaver said, referring to his West Bank neighbors and competitors.

The opening of Lakewood, designed by Ron Garl and financed by the New Orleans Firefighters Pension and Relief Fund, represents a bullish bet even as demand for golf has waned nationally and some local courses struggle for survival.

Lakewood's financiers hope the renovated course can help transform New Orleans into a golfing destination. The course enters an increasingly crowded field of mid- to high-priced options, including TPC Louisiana, English Turn and Stonebridge, all nearby on the West Bank. Lakewood also might compete with a $46 million golf complex planned for City Park, including a championship course that could open as soon as 2011 and could lure major tournaments one day.