We are not convinced that a single public meeting is sufficient to meet the requirements of law and policy when so important a matter as the scrapping of the 2005 Master Plan is being considered. A very large committment of state and federal dollars will be required to implement this plan, and a sufficient period of public debate and review is required. We ask the City Park Improvement Association to reject this proposal, or to require it to be revamped so that the loss of public recreational space, promised in the 2005 Master Plan, is compensated for by changes to the design of the golf plan. Any decision should wait for a period of real public review, and an unbiased analysis not driven by the inflated promises of developers.


Dear City Park Improvement Association:

The board of the one thousand member Orleans Audubon Society, representing National Audubon Society members from the fourteen parish area in southeast Louisiana, has reviewed the City Park Golf Master Plan by the Torre Design Consortium. We are writing today in response to the proposal to modify the March 29, 2005 New Orleans City Park Master Plan. The proposed changes to the existing Master Plan are unacceptable. Despite some modifications to the golfing plan presented at September 25, 2007 public meeting by the Bayou District Foundation, these changes are insufficient. We refer to the comments we sent on October 9, 2007 in response to that proposal.

The latest Golf Plan reduces the area of the park to be dedicated as natural areas by converting a portion of Couturie Forest to a fairway and by gobbling up the island adjacent to the stables, parcels which the Master Plan set aside as Natural Areas. In addition, this new course layout swallows up the baseball fields along Diagonal Drive, and crowds so closely to the existing lagoons that strips of vegetation along the Marconi and ring lagoons that serve as roosting sites for wood ducks, raptors, anhingas, herons, egrets and ibis will have to be sacrificed.

As we explained to Bob Becker in a meeting on January 07, 2009, much of the problem with this proposed golf expansion could be mitigated for by relatively minor adjustments to this plan. We have long argued that the park needs to open a greenway for park visitors stretching from north to south. Consigning bike riders, joggers, walkers and others to the periphery of the park, where trails serve as little more than sidewalks is not enough. Citizens have a right to experience this whole park and a minor shift in the layout of the golf courses could allow trails to be carried through the heart of the park from Couterie to Robert E. Lee.

We are resigned to the continued existence of golf courses in City Park. We note, though, that the major parks of other great cities, like Central Park in New York, among many, many others, have no golfing facilities. We are virtually unique among American cities with storied parks in dedicating nearly half our space to golf, a recreational pastime practiced intermittently by perhaps one in ten Americans. We understand that golf generates daily cash flow to a cash-strapped park. However, we decry the deceptive practice of claiming that golf pays for itself, when in fact taxpayers foot the bill for tens of millions in bonded capital outlays that are never paid back by golf fees.

We are extremely skeptical about the wisdom of so vast an investment in golf during a serious economic downturn, in a city that has lost at least one quarter of its population. We note that even before this crisis began, nationwide participation in golf remained flat, (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/nyregion/21golf.html), while participation in biking, walking, birding and other passive forms of recreation, already much higher than participation in golf, continues to grow (http://www.srs.fa.usda.gov/trends/2208UtahSSC.pdf). We note the recent re-opening of the course in Algiers, and the recent closing of a major course in Baton Rouge - an area that is growing in population at the expense of New Orleans. We ask if it is fair to build courses that will require much higher greens fees, in a city where few could afford the lower ones.

The people of New Orleans own City Park. They paid for the land. They have been given little say about its future or its management because the state saw fit long ago to hand over control of that city land to the City Park Improvement Association. Since Katrina, our citizens have had a chance to re-connect to their park. On any given day people are jogging, bike riding, walking dogs, fishing, birding, or just enjoying the scenery on the old golf courses. The former quasi-private country club is now a real public park. Please do not take all of that connection and freedom away.

We are not convinced that a single public meeting is sufficient to meet the requirements of law and policy when so important a matter as the scrapping of the 2005 Master Plan is being considered. A very large committment of state and federal dollars will be required to implement this plan, and a sufficient period of public debate and review is required. We ask the City Park Improvement Association to reject this proposal, or to require it to be revamped so that the loss of public recreational space, promised in the 2005 Master Plan, is compensated for by changes to the design of the golf plan. Any decision should wait for a period of real public review, and an unbiased analysis not driven by the inflated promises of developers.

Our members stand ready to work with you, park staff, and whatever developers you choose to resolve our differences. We are certain that new golf courses, carefully planned, can be designed to be more fair to our citizens, provide more opportunities for recreation, more protection for the park's wildlife, and be more environmentally and economically sustainable.

Sincerely
Jennifer Coulson
President, Orleans Audubon Society
801 Rue Dauphine, Ste 304
Metarire LA 70005
(985) 863-8516
www.jjaudubon.net
OrleansAudubon@aol.com