Cobbs Creek Restoration Project----another perspective

[TEPaul]

Kyle Harris's Post #1395 on the years long (about four years) and hugely large (57 pages and increasing) Cobbs Creek thread ("Cobbs Creek Collaborators---Restoration Dreams") has inspired me to create this separate thread.

This thread will try to explain from my own perspective both why and how this restoration project of Cobbs Creek began, and of course how it has progressed over the last four years or so. In the beginning of this current restoration project, and on over the last four years or so it really has been quite the story.

In some ways the restoration project seems to even mimic the somewhat years long process it took back in the first decade of the 20th century and the teens to get this interesting Philadelphia public golf course off the concept board and into site selection, design, construction and into play. All the foregoing back then, and the restoration today, are remarkably similar in their collaborative nature involving a number of different and diverse entities and peoples. I suppose that would be logical since Cobbs Creek has always belonged to the City of Philadelphia.

This post will serve as only a brief preface. I think I will make posts in sort of short mini-chapters, hopefully, none of which will be too long or too complicated for most to read, digest and appreciate.

[Tom MacWood]

As a few months ago you had never played CC. Have you had a chance to get out there?

[TEPaul]

CHAPTER ONE



Although I cannot be sure of it at this time, I believe the very first post of the aforementioned very long and hugely large thread on Cobbs Creek ("Cobbs Creek Collaborators----a Restoration Dream") is actually the very first time or post when the idea of a restoration of Cobbs Creek was introduced or at least emanated on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com.

My recollection is that very shortly after that particular thread began, my old friend Joe Logan, who I'd known from the tournament circuit as he was one of the primary golf reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer, called me about the thread.

Joe Logan is a great guy and like most reporters who produce interesting stories and themes, he has a good sense of both irony and humor. I remember that phone call well. It began like this:

Joe Logan:
"Tommy, have you read that thread about Cobbs Creek on GOLFCLUBATLAS?"

Tom Paul: "Not really."

Joe Logan: "Well read it because I would like to know who those guys think they are and if they actually believe they can get a restoration project of Cobbs Creek going just by putting it on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com (Logan had written a very interesting article previously about the brouhaha on GOLFCLUBALTAS over the bunker project of Merion East around 1989-1999).

Tom Paul: "Joe, I know those guys and they are just some really passionate golf architecture people who are Philadelphia public golfers."

Joe Logan: "Do they have any idea how naive they are?"

Tom Paul: "Probably not."

Joe Logan: "Well they are, if they don't even know who to talk to about Cobbs Creek."

Tom Paul: "I agree, they are naive. What do you suggest they do next?"



And so Joe Logan set up a meeting and introduced them (and me) to Barry Bessler, the man who back then ran the city parks for the mayor and the city council of Philadelphia, and the man who oversaw the operation of the city's public golf courses.

Joe told me he'd known Barry for a long time and he was definitely a no-nonsense guy who might throw you right out of his office if he wasn't interested in what you were proposing or had to say. For my own reasons, I purposely neglected to tell those from GOLFCLUBALTAS that.

We meet Barry Bessler in his office downtown. My recollection of those at the meeting were---Mike Cirba, Joe Bausch, Geoff Walsh, Joe Logan and me (Tom Paul).

As we left the meeting and were walking down the hall to the elevators Joe Bausch said: "I don't think he likes golf architecture and I don't think he got it." Joe Logan said to Joe Bausch: "Are you kidding me? You obviously don't understand Barry Bessler; I think you actually impressed him with the idea of restoring Cobbs Creek."

And so it began; In my opinion, that was the very first time the Cobbs Creek restoration dream or project got what some project planners call "TRACTION!"

[TEPaul]

CHAPTER TWO



My recollection is that at some point shortly after that initial meeting with Barry Bessler, I recommended to at least Cirba, Bausch and Walsh that they form a committee for a Cobbs Creek restoration, create a mission statement and/or long range plan, assign and delegate responsibilities to the commtteemen, and hold regular meetings with comprehensive meeting agendas.

We did that and the first number of meetings were held here at my barn/office on the farm in Newtown Square, Pa. I recall maybe three or four meetings here and a pretty interesting assortment of people came. They included Gil Hanse and his partner Jim Wagner, Jamie Slonis, a few prominent members of Merion and a very large assortment of people with some long and involved interest in Cobbs Creek. Some of the meetings included Joe Logan and perhaps another reporter.

My recollections of the discussions in those meeting were that the various entities involved with Cobbs were unusual and complex for a golf course; that the city would probably not fund the project and that we needed a true interconnected network of people for publicity and such. And then there was the complex issue of the management company that had Cobbs and the city courses under contract. I recall it was Billy Casper Golf Co. I think I also mentioned a few times it would be pretty much essential to bring the regular players of Cobbs into this project somehow. I can't remember where that one went back then.

I'm going to make this chronicle somewhat interactive as I just got a call from Mike Cirba who read the first chapter. He said he, Bausch and Walsh did find some contemporaneous material in the archives of GAP and they did find some financial material information on the planning and construction of the course in the city archives.

I mentioned to Cirba that I might just continue to write this only from my own recollections at this time as doing it that way might actually serve to show how recollections and historical facts or reportage can begin to diverge over time!!   

[TEPaul]

"As a few months ago you had never played CC. Have you had a chance to get out there?"


Tom MacWood:

Since the Cobbs Creek restoration began about four years ago I have been to Cobbs Creek a number of times with various people looking over the architecture, the history of the way it once was, and some ideas for a restoration plan, but I have never hit a golf ball on that golf course.