By Design - Spring 2020

19 golf courses be subsidized recreation, but instead may be treated as sink-or- swim cash flow assets. While some locales became overbuilt during the real estate boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, with golf often merely a means—an amenity—to push home sales, these excess courses in most instances can and should be preserved. This is especially true given the huge negatives associated with an abandoned golf course. When a course is decommissioned, it affects more than merely the golfers who once enjoyed it. It impacts wage-earners who made their livelihood from that golf course. It affects the property values of homeowners on the course or in the community. It influences the town or city which benefited from the resulting commerce. Horror stories from abandoned golf courses crop up all too frequently. Copperhead snakes, bikers and meth cookers took roost at a lost South Carolina course. Feral pigs took over another. At a fallow Philadelphia- area course, a marijuana-growing operation prospered until being discovered. A decommissioned layout on Florida’s Gulf Coast was choked with weeds 12 feet high. Countless safety concerns plague many abandoned tracks, from utility lines to crumbling cart paths to underground sprinklers. There’s virtually no end to the potential menaces. Not every course is destined to live forever, but many of them don’t have to go under, either. With persistence and creativity—and the assistance of a golf course architect—even a struggling golf property can be reimagined into something that benefits the greater good, in many cases with some form of golf playing A new design from ASGCA Past President Erik Larsen brought Jacksonville’s Selva Marina course back to life Photo: Atlantic Beach CC Horror stories from abandoned golf courses crop up all too frequently