The Future of the Becky Pierce Golf Course

Hey everyone - I wanted to post something about the current deliberation about what to do with the Becky Pierce Municipal golf course on old Airport Rd. The city has two options on their plate about what they're going to do with it. I attended the city council meeting this past week where John Hamilton presented a slideshow that laid out the two options in detail including cost analysis. You can view this presentation in its' entirety here.

I will summarize the options below.

Option 1: Renovate the existing golf course to make it playable again. This would be a complete renovation but would make zero changes to the course itself. This would include a brand new clubhouse since the old one is falling apart and not up to code. This also includes rebuilding the bathroom on the back side of the course. This option would cost a total of about $3million including the future needs of the course. This would be paid entirely by the city and the course would then be managed by Raven Golf out of Nashville, TN. You can view the scope/cost estimate slide here.

Option 2: This would turn the park area into a multi use park. The multi use park would include the following: New driving range facility for golfers, national caliber mountain bike course, entry level mountain bike course and teaching facility, national caliber cross country course, repave the golf cart paths for walking/jogging (about 6miles of paths), a new disc golf course, and a dog park. The total estimated cost of this would be roughly $1.7million. You can review the scope/cost estimate slide here.

After attending the meeting and taking emotions out of this, I whole heartedly feel like Option 2 is the best option. The raw data and revenue stream supports Option 2 much more so than Option 1. Many people simply feel 'attached' to the golf course because they played on it years ago or that the city 'needs to have a municipal course'.

To throw more data at you, the number of rounds played at Becky Pierce have been in decline for some time now. In 2015 they only had 89 annual memberships. Some of this can be attributed to mismanagement, which I certainly believe played a part in it, but much of this has to do with the decline of golf as a sport. The management company stated, in the presentation, that it would not be profitable for a few years and would start profiting around $200k which would then need to be reinvested back into the course in order to keep it up to date.

If it was turned into a multi use park, the Huntsville Track Club, SORBA, and other organizations that would use the facility would volunteer their time and money to up keep the park. This is something that the golf course would not be able to match and I believe it is VERY undervalued in this discussion. A multi use park would also serve MANY different hobbies (including golf) rather than only a small niche hobby.

The multi use park would bring in MILLIONS of indirect tax revenue dollars to the city every year. To give you an example, in 2001, the city of Terre Haute, IN made a bold decision to support the local university in it’s attempt to build a world class cross country course. After the course was complete, the university made a bid to host the NCAA Cross Country National Championships. They successfully won that bid and in 2002 Terre Haute became the new host site for Cross Country Nationals. Since then numerous national championships and large invitational meets have been held and the economic impact has been staggering. In 6 short years, hotel rooms booked increased 25%. The average room rate also increased 24%. The total economic impact has resulted in over $9 million dollars flooded into the local economy each year. Terre Haute doesn't even have an airport for teams to fly into and is 1.5 hours away from the largest city.

FAQ

• Can't both of these options coexist in that space? Unfortunately not. These are mutually exclusive and there are no other options on the board for the city to choose.

• Can't you make a cross country or mountain bike course somewhere else? Unfortunately not. Mountain bike courses are based on terrain and the city stated they do not have any other property within city limits that would meet the terrain needs. Same can be said for the cross country course.

• But that is the only public course in the city! Where would you golf? Well, there are lots of options. Sunset landing by the airport is public and has affordable rates. Huntsville Country Club is under new management and has very affordable memberships. Hampton Cove is public, too.

• Can't you just use the greenways/existing areas for a cross country course? No. This proposed course would be a national caliber course that would be able to host NCAA championships, state championships, etc. Saying "use the greenways" would be the equivalent of a runner telling a golfer to use a putt putt course. Apples and oranges.

If you are interested in supporting either decision, please make your voice known. Below are the emails for the city council members. They will be making a decision by June 22nd.

Mark Russell: mark.russell@huntsvilleal.gov

Jennie Robinson: Jennie.Robinson@huntsvilleal.gov

Bill Kling (District 4 where the park is): Bill.Kling@huntsvilleal.gov

Devyn Keith: Devyn.Keith@huntsvilleal.gov

Will Culver: Will.Culver@huntsvilleal.gov