Six courses are located within a 15-minute drive from Overton Park.
After golfers showed up at City Hall to complain about changes at
municipal golf courses, the City Council asked park services to take
another swing at cutting costs.
Starting last month, the parks department cut hours of operation at
six of the city’s eight courses to 40 hours a week. The move was part
of a $2.9 million cut from the park services’ 2010 budget, of which
about $590,000 came from golf.
The new schedule favors mornings over afternoons and weekends over
weekdays, but it’s not a big hit with all area golfers.
“We wanted people to have the opportunity to play when they want to
play, and many people like to play in the mornings,” park services
director Cindy Buchanan told council members. “But some people can’t
play in the mornings, because they have to work.”
Buchanan said the department considered closing courses in the
winter and reopening them full-time in the summer, but that wouldn’t
cover the shortfall. “Unfortunately, winter doesn’t cost as much as
summer,” she said. “The cost to open in the summer is about four times
that [of the winter]. For every month closed, you only get one week [in
the summer].”
Two of the city courses — the Links at Audubon and the Links
at Galloway — are still open seven days a week, but both of those
facilities generate a profit for the city.
The rest of the city courses operated at a collective $1.8 million
loss last year. The city’s biggest losers were the Links at Whitehaven,
which lost $429,000 last year, and the Links at Pine Hill, which lost
$382,000.
“We’ve considered actually closing golf courses that have lower
attendance. We’ve looked at raising fees,” Buchanan said. “We know
that’s not popular, and it’s not something we want to do, but we all
know budgets are cut.”
Councilman Kemp Conrad said that the competition facing the city
courses has changed in recent years.
“Before, if you didn’t belong to a private club, the only choice was
to play at a municipal course,” he said. “In the last 10 to 15 years, a
lot of daily-fee courses have sprung up.”
The most recent, Justin Timberlake’s Mirimichi in Millington, opened
last month.
In 2004, people played 124,000 rounds of golf at city courses. Four
years later, that number was down to 101,000 rounds.
Using the nine-hole course in Overton Park as a central location,
Conrad performed a drive-time analysis that showed four other city
courses — three of them 18-hole courses — were within
a 10-minute drive. Within a 15-minute drive, there were six.
“Let’s think about consolidating courses instead of cutting hours,”
Conrad said. “One option may be to look at which is farthest away or
only 10 percent utilized, and close a course.”
Some council members argue that the eight courses are an important
amenity the city provides to its citizens.
“Some of [the courses] might not make money, but that’s not the
fault of the citizens. … We still have a responsibility,” said
councilmember Barbara Swearengen Ware. “Playgrounds don’t make money,
but we can’t close all the playgrounds because we’re not making any
money.”
But if the question isn’t how many courses the city needs, maybe
it’s how many can Memphis afford.
The Links of Riverside has been on the chopping block before. Closed
for several years while the city built a $1.3 million clubhouse,
Riverside was the least-played course in 2004, 2007, and 2008. Last
year, the course cost the city $334,000. So if 3,260 rounds were played
there, the city subsidized each round by about $100.
Even if golf courses are important amenities, that seems a high
per-user cost. And if we’re talking about responsibility to citizens,
it might be important to look at exactly who course users are.
Riverside gets a steady stream of downtown and Harbor Town residents
and tourists. But on a recent morning, a third of the parking lot’s
cars bore Arkansas plates.
Twenty-year-old Brian Branch said he has played the course twice a
week for the last two summers. He likes how affordable the fees are
— $13 for one round, $20 for two — but his main reason
for coming is location.
“It’s the closest to get to,” explained the Tyronza, Arkansas,
resident.
Park services is expected to bring other golf options before the
City Council in coming weeks.
