The reality is when golf courses get into financial trouble, they reorganize.
Editor:
You are right, Mac Savage, in your most recent Letter: Ideas and Solutions for Beach Grove Golf Club (Optimist, Oct. 28) that the club needs the financial support from this land sale in order to be solvent and “a living part of the community.” stay.
The concern we should all have is what happens if Beach Grove Golf Course, a nonprofit organization, fails to find a solution to its financial problems. So what? Delta is unlikely to buy it for a park with golf balls flying around, and a GoFundMe site for a private golf course seems unlikely.
Housing pressure on urban golf courses is significant across North America. Ladner, Tsawwassen and Point Roberts have four 18-hole golf courses and one nine-hole course for 43,000 people. With the Beach Grove Golf Course’s financial troubles, its location, land value, and the advantage that it is already in an established community, it would be the most likely candidate for a home hunt.
The reality is when golf courses get into financial trouble, they reorganize. Deltans would be naive or uninformed to believe that this couldn’t happen here. If Beach Grove Golf Course can’t solve its mortgage problem, we could soon have a nine-hole public golf course on the clubhouse side with thousands of townhouses and apartments between 12th Avenue and 16th Avenue.
Hopefully not a scenario that will play out, but a possibility we should all consider.
Shawn Spelliscy