The Plock: Rewilded Golf Course

[Ronald Montesano]

The Plock is featured on BBC this morning:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250214-from-scotland-to-california-the-rewilded-golf-courses-where-wildlife-thrives

We have a Plock of our own in western New York. Westwood Country Club was a Willie Park Jr. layout. It closed 11 years ago. The plan is to turn it into Central Park Amherst. I loves me golf, but this is a no-brainer, for an over-built suburb to suddenly have this much land for a park.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/yAkPg53BeAkTU81k7

So many directions that this thread could take, so take the one you like. Other courses that should/could/might close, and return some incredible land to the residents? Or to nature in desperate need of space?

[Ian Galbraith]

Thanks for that - I'm currently in Plockton about 7 miles from The Plock on which the article is based. I played it as a golf course quite a few times while it was still maintained. Honesty box for payment, no clubhouse, just 9 holes mown where the mowers could access amongst the rocks. Stupendous views and great fun so long as the midges were not feasting on us!


The 're-wilded' land is I suspect much more widely used by the community for recreation and walking that it ever was during it's golfing period. Great asset now and we visit regularly. 

[MCirba]

It really depends if a municipality has the financial resources to effectively maintain upwards of hundreds of acres as a "park".

In most major Metropolitan areas in the US that is not the case and what results is a no man's land "jungle" where crime, and drugs, homelessness and danger fester and grow.  Now that's "re-wilding" all right, but not the type that's beneficial to the community.  Good-hearted, well-intentioned environmentalists may disagree but that's the sad reality.

[Ronald Montesano]

Thanks for that update, Ian.

Mike, a solid point. Will Cobbs Creek have trails/public space as it returns to glory? That would seem to benefit and placate a fair number. Clearly it works in some parts of the golfing world, but only in a municipal setting.

In the case of Westwood (NY) no one wanted to take it over as a golf course. There was talk about a course swap, where the municipal (Audubon) across Maple Road would become town land, and Westwood would become the town course. It didn't get far. So, it was either going to be developed completely into housing, or this.

[Greg Hohman]

I cannot find where I read it: Oswit Land Trust to oversee rewilding of recently closed Desert Dunes (Desert Hot Springs CA).

[MCirba]

Mike, a solid point. Will Cobbs Creek have trails/public space as it returns to glory? That would seem to benefit and placate a fair number. Clearly it works in some parts of the golfing world, but only in a municipal setting.

In the case of Westwood (NY) no one wanted to take it over as a golf course. There was talk about a course swap, where the municipal (Audubon) across ot Maple Road would become town land, and Westwood would become the town course. It didn't get far. So, it was either going to be developed completely into housing, or this.

Ron,

Cobbs Creek Park in total is over 850 acres that includes a 3.7 mile nature walking trail.  The portion that is being restored/renovated as part of the ongoing project includes about 393 of those acres.

The end result will include:

Restoration of the original 18 hole golf course.
A new 9 hole golf course on land that was formerly the 18 hole overflow "Karakung" golf course
Creation of 35 acres of new wetlands
Creek flooding remediation along nearly 4 miles of creeks through the property
TGR Learning Lab (2nd in the country) teaching STEM instruction
TGR "Short Course" outside TGR Learning Lab
Spieth Foundation 22,000 ft putting green outside TGR Learning Lab
60+ Bay Top Tracer Driving Range and practice area
Historical Museum and Restaurant
Creation of a New Clubhouse

To be honest, the environmental groups couldn't care less about any of these benefits to the city or surrounding community.   They even wrote articles suggesting that beavers would naturally solve flooding issues if we just turned the entire property over to natural overgrowth.   I've played there hundreds of times and never once saw a beaver. 

The net environmental benefit to the project has been well-documented and everyone from the EPA to state authorities have said that the approach being taken could be a model for other cities to help control runoff, erosion, etc., but none of this mattered to the environmental groups out to stop the project.  You would have thought we were burning the Amazon rainforest.

I think you know I'm not an anti-science, anti-climate-change denier but these folks are anti-growth zealots.  Once approvals were finally garnered, they just moved on to try to stop the next project (unrelated to Cobbs) that required tree removal and construction in South Philly.   


As to the project near you, agreed that a well-maintained and funded park and the resultant open-space is much better than yet another housing development.  I hate to see any golf course go under but I've seen enough of them fail to know that left un-funded and neglected the resulting landscape is hardly naturally alchemistically transformed into Yosemite National Forest, particularly in a densely populated urban setting.

[Ronald Montesano]

No doubt, Cobbs Creek is the model for all remediation and restorative and educational and formative projects (and also a GCA poster child, to boot!)

There are extreme zealots on both sides of the current aisle, and they both extract delay and damage at alamring rates. I'm glad that they were not able to impede the progress of Cobbs.

[MCirba]

There are extreme zealots on both sides of the current aisle, and they both extract delay and damage at alamring rates. I'm glad that they were not able to impede the progress of Cobbs.

Thanks, Ron.   Agreed on all counts. 


As someone said, it's much easier to destroy than create.   

[David_Tepper]

San Geronimo GC in Marin County, CA (a Vern Macan course) was a privately owned daily fee course for about 60 years. It was purchased by the county several years ago and has been "rewilded."


I think the whole transaction stinks and is a gross misuse of public funds. But I don't live and vote (and pay taxes). in Marin County

 
https://www.marinij.com/2024/04/03/marin-county-finalizes-purchase-of-former-san-geronimo-golf-course/

[MCirba]

I think my overall point is that if the "re-wilded" golf course is to be used by anything but wildlife it needs funding to maintain for human usage ongoing.   I've seen how quickly nature reclaims an abandoned golf course and it's not something you'd want to be trekking through for recreational purposes..

[Greg Hohman]

Wingfield Pines Golf and Swim Club (1968-1983), located south of Pittsburgh, was purchased by the Allegheny Land Trust in Dec 2001. It's an 87-acre conservation area:

 https://alleghenylandtrust.org/green-space/wingfield-pines/
 
Personal note: My little league baseball team was there in the summer of 1971 to stargaze at the Pirates. A teammate's father was a part owner of WP. In deck chairs by the pool were first baseman Bob Robertson and legendary announcer Bob Prince. I could smell beer or stronger stuff. A brother who was also on the team and I lost the MLB all-star ballots we used to get autographs, so we don't know, nor can we remember, which other notables were there. Roberto Clemente, my hero, was not present. :'( That season, the Bucs fielded the first all-minority lineup and won the Fall Classic. I returned in 2019. The concrete around the pool remains, the pool has been filled and grassed, a diving board and ladder or two are in their original places. The air contained no trace of beer or stronger stuff to follow to the places where Robertson and Prince had presided.

The ignominious name of our quite decent team: the Rocks.

[Matthew Delahunty]

I don't know if the Plock is the best example for those want to espouse the benefits of rewilding golf courses because it's not typical of the locations that those activists would be targeting. 


In any event, I agree that the cost to convert or maintain a rewilded golf course needs to be taken into account.  In my home city, Melbourne, the Elsternwick municipal course, a 9 hole course on the site of the original home of what is now the Kingston Heath Golf Club, is being converted into a nature reserve.  In about 2017, the local council had a vote whether to upgrade the golf facilities or turn the land into a nature reserve.  The cost of maintaining the land as a golf course was far less than the project cost of conversion, so the Council voted to maintain the land as a golf course.  However, around 12 months later the company managing the golf course did not wish to renew its lease.  So the decision was made to rewild the land and create a storm water retaining basin.  The current estimate of the cost to complete the conversion is around $20 million.  Six years into the project and the site is still largely closed off to the public and the total cost will, no doubt, blow out.


I just think of what they could have achieved with $5 million to improve the golf facilities there.

[MCirba]

I don't know if the Plock is the best example for those want to espouse the benefits of rewilding golf courses because it's not typical of the locations that those activists would be targeting. 


In any event, I agree that the cost to convert or maintain a rewilded golf course needs to be taken into account.  In my home city, Melbourne, the Elsternwick municipal course, a 9 hole course on the site of the original home of what is now the Kingston Heath Golf Club, is being converted into a nature reserve.  In about 2017, the local council had a vote whether to upgrade the golf facilities or turn the land into a nature reserve.  The cost of maintaining the land as a golf course was far less than the project cost of conversion, so the Council voted to maintain the land as a golf course.  However, around 12 months later the company managing the golf course did not wish to renew its lease.  So the decision was made to rewild the land and create a storm water retaining basin.  The current estimate of the cost to complete the conversion is around $20 million.  Six years into the project and the site is still largely closed off to the public and the total cost will, no doubt, blow out.


I just think of what they could have achieved with $5 million to improve the golf facilities there.

Bingo.


And that's the message and eco-envo reality that the golf industry needs to be amplifying.

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