by There was unkempt grass in one sand trap and wooden blocks and a toy castle in another, evidence of children playing. People were walking their dogs on the street, which seemed quite uneven and unkempt. This was to be expected.
Today, these lands are cut only twice a year and have not been sprayed with pesticides or rodenticides since 2018, which is when this 157-acre stretch of land stopped being the San Gerónimo Golf Course and began a journey to become wild, or at least wilder, once again.
A small number of closed golf courses across the country have been purchased by land trusts, municipalities and nonprofit groups and transformed into nature preserves, parks and wetlands. Among them are sites in Detroit, PennsylvaniaColorado, the Finger Lakes of upstate New York and at least four in California.
“We quickly recognized the high restoration value, the conservation value and the recreational value of public access,” said Guillermo Rodríguez, California state director of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which purchased the San Gerónimo field, in Marin County, for $8.9 million. in 2018 and renamed it San Geronimo Commons.
During a recent tour of the land, which is located in the lower San Gerónimo Valley, less than an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, Rodríguez pointed out the hills that serve as habitat for wildlife, including falcons that flew over their heads. “On both sides there are public lands,” he said. “This was the missing link.”
The restoration of the San Gerónimo grounds is still underway. The floodplains will be reconnected and a fish barrier has been removed, allowing access to more robust migratory and breeding grounds for endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead. Trails are planned that would border sensitive habitat, turning the land into a publicly accessible ecological life raft, markedly different from its time as a golf course.
“It’s a great place and it’s beautiful,” said Charles Esposito, 76, a retiree who was enjoying a recent walk. “I love it.”
In recent years, the golf industry has taken steps to alleviate its environmental cost in some locations by using less water, plant pollinator-friendly plants and reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers.
However, the resources and chemicals required for a pristine emerald turf have made the sport the bête noire of environmentalists. America’s approximately 16,000 golf courses use 1.5 billion gallons of water a day, according to the United States Golf Association, and together are treated with 100,000 tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium a year.
The United States has more golf courses than McDonald’s and more than any other country, accounting for about 42 percent of all courses in the world, according to the National Golf Foundation.
That oversupply, coupled with development pressures, has led to more golf courses closing than opening since 2006. A return to nature, or a version of it, remains relatively rare on older courses. of golf, most of which end up in the hands of commercial or residential developers, according to the National Golf Foundation. A recent example was a former 36-hole golf facility in New Hampshire that Target purchased for nearly $122 million in 2023 to build a new distribution center.
For a golf course to become a public green space, an unlikely set of stars needs to align. There has to be a willing seller and, crucially, a conservation-minded buyer who can afford not only to buy the land but also to restore it. According to Eric Bosman, an urban planner at the design and planning firm Kimley-Horne, between 2010 and October 2022, 28 former fields were transformed into public green spaces.
But the number appears to be slowly increasing. In 2023, the former Cedar View Golf Course, on the east shore of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York, was purchased by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. Another non-profit organization, the West Lake Art Conservation Center, plans to transform about 230 acres of the closed Lakeview Golf & Country Club in Owasco into a nature preserve.
Although rebuilding a golf course may disappoint players, it can bring great benefits to animals, plants and people.
A few hundred miles south of San Gerónimo, on land owned by the University of California, Santa Barbara, the 64-acre tract that once housed Ocean Meadows Golf Course is now an estuary surrounded by grasslands, marshes and islands. of coastal sage scrub.
The previous owner had planned to sell the field to a developer, but the 2008 recession thwarted him, according to Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at the university’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration, which manages the land. People at the school asked for help from the Trust for Public Land, which bought the property for $7 million in 2013 and donated it to the university.
The extensive restoration of the Santa Barbara site took years and was funded through $16 million in local, state and federal grants. It included the relocation of 350,000 cubic yards of land that the golf course developers had taken from nearby mesas and pushed over wetlands to create the course decades ago. Rehabilitated wetlands now reduce flood risks and protect against sea level rise, Dr Stratton said. The change also meant that nearby homes were no longer in a federal flood zone. Without golf balls whizzing overhead, the land has become a habitat for migratory shorebirds, including black-necked stilts, yellow-legged sandpipers, and sandpipers, and has even attracted the stealthy American bittern. The newly installed underground rock structures provide habitat for rabbits, ground squirrels, mice and owls.
Two federally endangered plants, the Ventura marsh milkvetch and the marsh bird’s beak, have also been established at the site as part of an effort to move some plants north as their Natural habitats become too warm. Students from the university have participated in the restoration work and have tracked hundreds of animal species.
The public has also welcomed the property. Last October, members of the Chumash tribe performed a cultural burn on part of the prairie, and the site attracts bird watchers and children on bicycles, who use its paths to get to school.
“What we have learned is how important these areas are to people; who emotionally and psychologically need them,” Dr. Stratton said.
But transformations are not always smooth. After the Trust for Public Land purchased the San Geronimo site, it planned to sell it to Marin County. But a group of local golf advocates sued successfully to block the county’s purchase, alleging that an environmental analysis had not been completed. They also introduced a ballot measure to limit what the county could do with the land. He was defeated, and about 70 percent of voters in San Gerónimo chose to continue with reconstruction.
Although restoration was delayed, conservation easements were secured for most of the site, preventing future development, and a new plan was developed for Marin County to acquire the land. The county intends to pay the Trust for Public Land $4.9 million for a parcel where the clubhouse is located and build a fire station there, according to Dennis Rodoni, the county supervisor. The Trust for Public Land then plans to transfer ownership of the remaining 130 open acres to the county.
In Palm Springs, some neighbors of the former Mesquite Golf & Country Club resisted plans to restore that land to its natural state, saying they preferred the view provided by a manicured 18-hole championship course.
“We once had a very nice view that looked from the golf course to the mountains,” said Don Olness, a board member of the homeowners association of an adjacent condo development. But since Oswit Land Trust bought the golf course for $9 million in 2022, the area has become overgrown with weeds, dead trees and downed branches, he said. “It’s basically a neglected area,” Olness said.
Citing a lease agreement with the golf course owners, the homeowners association sued to temporarily halt any changes made by the land trust, which purchased the course with a donation from Brad Prescott, a philanthropist, and renamed it Prescott Preserve.
Jane Garrison, founder and executive director of the land trust, said the pending lawsuit prevents the trust from accessing a multimillion-dollar grant needed to properly restore the land. But of the trust’s five properties, Prescott Preserve has quickly become the most popular.
The trust removed the poison from the course’s maintenance shed, along with poison and gopher traps around the site, Ms Garrison said. She and her colleagues found dead rabbits and owls, and an examination confirmed that a ground squirrel had died after consuming rodenticide, which makes predators such as coyotes and bobcats susceptible to mange.
“When you remove all the poison and stop that cycle, you give those species a chance to recover,” Garrison said.
Although restoration is just beginning, wildflowers and plants have already reappeared, he said. A local nursery donated and planted about 100 native trees, including desert willows, ironwoods and mesquites. He The Trust decided to maintain ponds on site with recycled water because climate change has made it difficult for wildlife to find water.
The group hopes to acquire more golf courses in Palm Springs, which, despite being in a desert, is home to many courses. “When the land is gone, it is gone forever, once they build condos,” Garrison said. “But when you save it, it is saved forever. “You can’t put a price on that.”
