The city of South Bend, Ind. is spending $900,000 to “re-energize” the former barn, which used to host wedding receptions, parties and school dances. “It has less to do with revenue and more with ensuring our shared public spaces are vibrant, open and accessible to all,” said the Executive Director of the city’s Venues, Parks & Arts department.
The city’s $900,000 upgrade of the Erskine Park Golf Course building won’t be finished when the course opens for play April 15, but South Bend, Ind. officials say the changes will be worth the wait, the South Bend Tribune reported. Memorial Day is now when the project is expected to wrap up, said Tony Stearns, the city’s golf director.
After analyzing the course’s needs for a year and a half, the city last year hired Ziolkowski Construction to make a series of dramatic changes, with work beginning in October but encountering some weather-related delays that month, according to the Tribune report. The city is paying for the project with money from the Southside Tax Incremental Financing District, which is largely commercial property tax dollars.
Some of the changes will improve the golfers’ experience, such as routing carts coming off the 18th hole around the front of the building rather than the back, and serving drinks and snacks on the ground floor instead of making players climb steps to the main floor, the Tribune reported.
Other changes have nothing to do with golf. They’re aimed at returning the building, once a barn on the Erskine family farm, to wider community use, according to the Tribune report. It was once rented out for community events such as wedding receptions, parties and school dances, but that largely stopped in the mid-1990s when the golf shop moved into the space from an outbuilding. The golf shop will now be on the west end of the lower floor.
C+RB reported on the original plans in August 2018.
“What we wanted to do was find a way to re-energize the building and use it for the community, not just a golf course,” Stearns said. “I found out the other day my aunt and uncle got married here. That’s what we want to do, celebrate that history and revert it back. If you think about it, everybody’s reinventing their space to make it look like an old barn, right? We’re lucky enough to already have it.”
The space will now be usable for events without affecting golfers and vice versa, the Tribune reported.
Golf in recent years has been on the decline nationally and locally, but replacing lost green fee revenue with banquet space rentals wasn’t the primary driver of the project, Aaron Perri, executive director of the city’s Venues, Parks & Arts told Tribune.
“It has less to do with revenue and more with ensuring our shared public spaces are vibrant, open and accessible to all,” Perri said.
When the course opens for play, the shop will be housed temporarily in a mobile building in the parking lot, and 18-hole play will begin on Hole 3, the Tribune reported. Play will again start on Hole 1 after construction is finished.
The city built the 18-hole golf course in 1925 on land donated by Albert Erskine, president of Studebaker Corp, the Tribune reported. In late 2004, the city was considering selling the course land for retail development and building a new golf course on yet-to-be-identified land south of the city, but ultimately killed the project amid a furious public backlash after The Tribune began reporting on the plans.
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