Turning Golf Courses into Parks, Governing, 24 March 2010.
The Parks Board in Richmond, Indiana, recently voted to turn the 85-year-old Glen Miller links from a nine-hole course into a three-hole practice facility, with the rest of the space given over to general recreation.
In North Las Vegas, Nevada, golfers played their last round at the Craig Ranch municipal course in May. The site is to become a 135-acre regional park, with a children's play area, a dog park, picnic grounds and trails set to open next summer.
We have land shortages in lots of our fast-growth cities and suburbs and we have an overabundance of golf courses, Fast Company, 6 Mar 2019.
"In Detroit, the city plans to turn a course into a park with nature trails and space to capture stormwater. Near Seattle, the city of Bothell bought an 87-acre course to create public open space and to restore wildlife habitat. In Wisconsin, one former course now has wetlands and forested areas to support migratory birds. In Englewood, Florida, another is now a wildflower preserve."
Bye-bye Golf Courses, Hello Nature Preserves. Audubon Magazine, Sept 2013.
Reimagining golf courses pays off well beyond a park’s boundaries. Maintaining fairways and greens typically requires heavy applications of pesticides and fertilizers—which can run off and pollute local waterways—not to mention enormous quantities of water. (Audubon-certified courses are not affiliated with the National Audubon Society.) A study published in 2006 in the journal Sport in Society reported that although the amount of chemicals sprayed on courses varies, an average of 1.5 tons of agrochemicals—some of them known carcinogens—is used on golf courses every year. What’s more, 90 percent of those substances, when sprayed, end up in the air, where people inhale them. Building golf courses also destroys habitat and muddies streams to the detriment of aquatic life.
Cambridge City Council Approves Contentious Golf Course Policy Order, The Harvard Crimson, 2 February 2022.