Warrant Article 39: Reimagining
Brookline's Open Space
The Town of Brookline is dedicated to open space and environmental responsibility, yet our largest open space is allocated to a 120 acre 18-hole golf course that falls short of meeting these priorities. The course was established in the 1920's when golf was the sport of the era. It opened in 1933, at a time when there were five varsity sports at BHS. Now there are 49 at the varsity, junior varsity, and first year levels. At that time there were no youth sports, women didn't wear pants in public, and life expectancy averaged 60 years old. The world has changed in 100 years and so have our needs and desires for health, environmentalism, and land use.
Yet, despite strong support for alternate uses, the Brookline Parks and Rec Commission created a 2022 Golf Course Master Plan that ignored public opinion and their own commitment to consider a 9-hole course, and vowed to consider only 18-hole options on this land.
A modest proposal Our Fall 2022 Warrant article asks for a process to broaden the scope of the Golf Course Landscape Master Plan to consider what other uses are feasible within the 120 acres, taking into account the wants expressed in the Parks, Recreation and Open Space 2019 Strategic Master Plan Survey.
2022 is not 1927. The biggest concerns voiced by our community and community leaders in the last five years are equity, climate crisis, and limited physical resources (e.g., land) to meet the needs of our growing population. Our Town Meeting and community have deemed necessary a set of policies and practices that increase green space, protect watersheds, reduce carbon emissions and provide these things equitably across all community members, including repurposing and/or increasing town holdings to address pressure from increased community needs due to population growth.
Given our urgent priorities and the limited resources we currently have to address them, we must take stock of how town resources are currently used to make sure we are meeting the agenda and standards we have set up for ourselves, and this includes this 120-acre spot that is currently stands as the town resource that is the most out of sync with all our stated priorities.
What would we do with 120 acres today? This is how we must approach our properties, particularly this very large one, or we'll never meet our ambitious goals, or the needs that are so clearly reflected in our town's data: survey; garden waitlists; rotation of sports fields and how many are active at a given time; number of teams; and so many other measures of our collective well-being.
If we were given 120 acres today, would we allocate that land to be a golf course? More likely, we would be in an uproar if dozens of acres were slated for deforestation for an activity engaged in by a tiny fraction of residents and non-residents. This is a critical pivot point. We can and must consider putting this land to much better community use than it currently serves.
On Golf Golf is a terrific leisure activity and this land has served many people well, but golf also raises concerns. It does not currently engage in practices that could stem our climate crisis - it reduces tree cover, uses pesticides, requires intensive watering. It is a low density land use that simply cannot provide the much needed exercise and activity to the same number of kids and adults as other sports can in the same footprint.
Expanding the scope of the golf master plan to include an option for 9-hole course plus other options is an extremely low-risk step that can have a huge impact on our open space and climate goals, our recreation needs for all ages, and equity regarding sports and outdoor access.