The South Course at City Park is part of a larger neighborhood revitalization in New Orleans, and 16 similar projects are being implemented across the country. Gerry Barousse Jr., a real estate developer and banker, noted that including golf in the project was “crucial to create sustainability within the model and a revenue stream to support the program.”
Bayou Oaks Golf Course at City Park South is revitalizing the neighborhood in New Orleans, the New York Times reported.
To create the South Course, Rees Jones took two City Park courses left in ruins by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and built an 18-hole layout that is expected to garner the same cachet among golfers as two of his previous municipal courses, Torrey Pines and Bethpage Black, which have hosted the United States Open, the Times reported.
The third hole sits not far from Columbia Parc, a housing development in the Seventh Ward that was built through a public-private partnership after the blighted St. Bernard public housing complex had been demolished. The Columbia Parc project, which includes mixed-income residences and other community assets, has been hailed as a way to revitalize a neighborhood. It has also been criticized for displacing many residents of St. Bernard, the Times reported.
Jonathan Ashford, 9, lives in Columbia Parc with his mother, Claudette Ashford, and participates in the First Tee of Greater New Orleans, which is hosted at Bayou Oaks. The public golf facility opened April 21, the Times reported.
“It’s like having a golf course in your backyard,” said Claudette Ashford.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in August 2005, Charlie Yates Jr., an Atlanta philanthropist and an executive at the time for Zurich Insurance Group, title sponsor of the PGA Tour stop in New Orleans, reached out to Mike Rodrigue, a former tournament chairman of the Zurich Classic. Yates invited Rodrigue to bring a group to see the urban revitalization project nested next to East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, the home course for Bobby Jones, the first golfer to complete golf’s Grand Slam, in 1930, the Times reported.
A few months later, Rodrigue toured East Lake’s surrounding community with Gerry Barousse Jr., a real estate developer and banker, and Gary Solomon, a venture capitalist. They marveled at the effort, which was spearheaded by Tom Cousins, a real estate developer who built the CNN Center and helped bring N.B.A. and N.H.L. teams to Atlanta. In 1995, Cousins bought East Lake Golf Club out of receivership and established the East Lake Foundation. He partnered with the City of Atlanta to raze East Lake Meadows, a troubled 650-unit public housing complex, and build the Villages of East Lake, a mixed-income community. A charter school, a Y.M.C.A. and a nine-hole public golf course soon followed, the Times reported.
Proceeds from hosting the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club are funneled back to the foundation for community programs. The effect on the neighborhood can be measured in a drastic reduction in crime, high employment rates, and improved academic scores and high school graduation rates, the Times reported.
On the trip home to New Orleans, Rodrigue’s group debated whether the East Lake model could be replicated in New Orleans. A larger debate brewed over the future of public housing in New Orleans, a subject fraught with charges of gentrification and discrimination. Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had more than 7,000 public housing units, the Times reported.
Rodrigue dreamed of City Park having a championship course, but it lacked the resources to build one. Hurricane Katrina provided an opportunity to rethink the future of the golf course, which in its heyday had 81 holes and is now also home to the North Course, an 18-hole layout, that reopened in 2009, the Times reported.
Inspired by the revitalization of the East Lake community, Rodrigue, Barousse and Solomon formed the Bayou District Foundation, a nonprofit organization to spearhead neighborhood redevelopment in New Orleans. Construction of Columbia Parc became a reality when the Housing Authority of New Orleans received $120 million in low-income housing tax credits from a variety of federal programs and selected the Bayou District Foundation as its partner. All told, 685 mixed-income residential units, including a senior living center, were built over 13 city blocks, the Times reported.
Of the 685 households, 493 have public-housing or reduced-rental rates, with all community residents either employed at least 20 hours per week, in vocational training or enrolled in an accredited college or university. Still, of those who had lived in the more than 3,000 households in New Orleans’s four largest public housing complexes before Hurricane Katrina, only a percentage have returned to their former neighborhoods, leading to a housing crunch and charges of discrimination. In May 2010, displaced residents staged a rally and sit-in at the Columbia Parc offices to demand their right to return to their homes. Approximately 125 families who lived in St. Bernard are residents of Columbia Parc, the Times reported.
The neighborhood has continued to change. In 2013, the Bayou District Foundation opened an early childhood learning center that serves 168 Head Start-eligible children ages 6 weeks to 5 years. Workers are digging test pylons for a charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade that is scheduled to open in 2018, two blocks from a college preparatory public high school, the Times reported.
Sixteen communities across the country are working on neighborhood revitalization projects patterned after East Lake, and another 30 are in the pipeline, Cousins said. So far, New Orleans is the only city to feature golf as part of its urban redevelopment. Barousse, chairman of the Bayou District Foundation, said “it’s hard for some people to connect the dots” about why the golf element was necessary, the Times reported.
“But from our perspective,” Barousse said, “we think it is crucial to create sustainability within the model and a revenue stream to support the program.”
The foundation and New Orleans were partners on the $24 million golf course project, and about $500,000 annually from golf operations will help support community programs, with another $800,000 going toward activities at City Park, the Times reported.
A market feasibility study projected 24,000 rounds at Bayou Oaks as the break-even point, and Barousse said the budget calls for 30,000 rounds. With 54,000 people within a mile of the 36-hole facility, and a desirable location 10 minutes from downtown, Bayou Oaks is expected to tap into the city’s tourism and convention business, and add to the appeal of future Super Bowl and Final Four bids, the Times reported.
The golf course plan had also generated protests by conservationists, who cited the presence of wetlands and filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to stop the construction. A compromise was reached in which the golf footprint in the park was left 38% smaller than it was before Katrina. The remainder of the land was converted into festival grounds, a Frisbee golf course and green space for public use, the Times reported.
The golf complex includes a junior training center and First Tee facility, offering local youths access to a world-class facility operated by the PGA Tour. The Zurich Classic is held at T.P.C. Louisiana, but Bayou Oaks would like to host a prominent event. The tour’s first tournament in New Orleans, in 1938, was in City Park, the Times reported.
“Golf provides some incremental revenue, but the magic is the whole system,” said Joe Ogilvie, a former tour player who sat on the foundation’s advisory board. “The community is revitalized based on the shared vision that life can be better for the student, the parent and if you achieve that the overall community.”
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