Hi there, my name is Tony Hart, I’ll be your organizer for this event. For the past three years I have visited City Park nearly every day, often hiking upwards of 5 miles a day as shown on the Cover Photo above. I was aware of the Golf Course attempts over a year ago when it appeared in the Picayune, but my nerves were quickly settled by a New Orleans native that said there had been attempts for the past 7 years with no success. Unfortunately the time has come, and quickly at that. No signage, no public notification of a timeline has been presented.

Rather, on February 13th a fence had suddenly been erected. This installation caused a ruptured water main that drained into the Couturie Forest Arboretum for at least five days without repair and has been fixed as of February 23rd.

The company behind the funding of the Golf Course is an admirable non-profit organization called Bayou District Foundation. I think what they have done for the city and are attempting to do is commendable, but they are basing their creation of a golf course off a project called East Lake of Atlanta, Georgia.

While East Lake is a fantastic achievement of turning a crime-ridden area into a growing, healthy, low-income area, I don't believe that their creation of a golf course is what led to the success of their project. East Lake was successful because of:

-Mixed Income Housing
-Cradle-To-College Education
-Community Wellness
(Resident and Community Support Program–to develop a sense of community while providing resources to help residents thrive. Programs are focused on economic stability and community engagement and include career development, financial literacy and community-building events.)
(Community Health Programs aimed at prevention as well as treatment- In partnership with YMCA)
-Community Learning Garden & Urban Farm

Lastly on that list is the Charlie Yates Golf Course, which happens to be a 9-hole course, not an 18-hole course (which is what Bayou District Foundation is trying to create). After a fair amount of research, I’m led to believe East Lake chose a 9-hole course because of a significant decline in golf popularity.

The number of US Golfers has dropped 24% from its peak in 2002. It found in 2013 alone, the game lost 1.1 million players. The number of golfers is lower than in 1990, even though US population is 27% greater. Leading sports stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods are missing their golf gear sales targets by $34 Million in just the first quarter. Well-known brands like TaylorMade are noticing 34% drops in sales in their first quarter.

As for courses? Only 14 new courses were built in the U.S. in 2013, while almost 160 shut down. Last year marked the eighth straight year that more courses closed than opened.
The U.S. Golf Association, the PGA of America, and Golf Digest have launched a “Time for Nine” campaign to counter complaints that the traditional 18-hole game takes too much time. The traditional 18-hole round requires about six hours ‘door-to-door,’ including more than four on the course. Nor does the pastime have the social currency it once held since social networking is done from phones, not the greens.

Some people say that these days families expect men to be with them on weekends. Their fathers and grandfathers were allowed to work late nights and have their own fun all weekend, but younger women expect more face time with their husbands, especially when there are children. Another man notes “and younger men look forward to spending more face time with their kids than my parent’s generation did.”

But those are just the statistics on golf as a whole. Now lets look at minorities in golf, specifically Native Americans, as Bayou District Foundation is aiming to provide golf for the “disadvantaged.”

Statistics say that African Americans make up less than a HALF of 1% of the nations 28,000 pros. Hispanics and Asian minorities make up less than 2%. Pros aside, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians STILL make up less than 21%. To compare this, even tennis has a greater number of minorities, ranking at 24%. Think it’s a new concept? It’s not. Ten years ago when Tiger Woods joined the PGA Tour and won, people thought the sport would blow up with young kids of all races. Yet the boom never came, and ten years later Tiger Woods is still the only PGA Tour African American player.

And while programs at East Lake like First TEE offer scholarships and set up courses where costs are low, golf is an extremely expensive sport. Between greens fees, club costs, equipment, and training that will actually put them in standing for making golf their primary income, the chances that a low income family will want to follow golf over Football, Basketball, Baseball, or Soccer, is unlikely. After all, basketball, baseball and soccer all only require approximately $10 for a ball and can be played almost anywhere. Football with the exception of pads and a helmet is slightly more expensive but nowhere near golf.

In terms of scholarships alone, Division 1 NCAA provides the scholarships in the following:
Football ranks at 85 scholarships per school, Basketball at 13 per school, Baseball at 11.7, Soccer at 9.9, and Golf at 4.5 per school. The only sport ranking lower is Rifle at 3.6 scholarships per school.

Not to mention Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Soccer are all team sports that encourage teamwork, whereas Golf is an individual sport. Not to mention the ratio of whites to minorities in the other 4 sports are much more equal than Golf has ever been or currently is.

So what are we left with? That’s where this group will hopefully come in use. I’m looking for a COMMUNITY based, crowd-sourced opinion on better uses of the green space. As we can tell, the course does NOT need to be 18 holes. There is already an 18-hole course on the North Course of City Park, so if any courses are to be added, a 9-hole course seems to be the only logical addition. That would free up the current plan to offer 2/3rd the space to other developments.

After reviewing City Park’s “Master Plan of 2018” in juxtaposition to the 2005 plan, ‘open areas’, which designate space for festivals, sports, urban farming, biking, walking and jogging trails and other similar uses, have gained in popularity. Personally I feel a continuation of these spaces could be designated for the 2/3rd that would be left. As much as I would love to see the space left a “natural land” I am a realist, and understand that large bodies of land are extremely valuable in a monetary sense within a growing city.

So please, leave a message, New Orleans! You have a voice and it should be heard. I think Bayou District Foundation has good intentions and have done good things for our city with the Mixed Income Housing and their Wellness Programs, and their current project of a large high school that will back up against the bayou, but I think they simply need to hear other, better alternatives for the space allotted for the golf course. If they really have the city in their best interests, they will hear what the city has to say.