The golfing great’s design firm has offered to build two destination-caliber golf courses as part of the revival of the city’s historic Frederick Law Olmsted parks. The course designs would include landscaping for winter recreation, such as cross-country ski trails and sled runs. An education center for inner-city youth is also part of the plans for the $40 million project.
Jack Nicklaus, the retired golfing great, wants to redesign golf courses for two of Buffalo, N.Y.’s historic Frederick Law Olmsted parks, The Buffalo News reported.
Nicklaus Design, based in North Palm Beach, Fla., has offered to build two destination-caliber golf courses, the News reported. One would have a smaller footprint in the city’s Delaware Park and the other would be a nine-hole course on a privately owned parcel in South Buffalo near South Park.
The plan addresses two goals that fans of Olmsted, popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, embrace, the News reported. The Delaware Park project would return more of that property to its natural state, the relocating the course at South Park would restore Olmsted’s neglected vision for a South Park Arboretum.
Kevin Gaughan, a community activist, is behind the plan, the News reported. “Kevin’s idea to combine our course design work with Buffalo’s efforts to restore its Olmsted legacy is innovative,” Nicklaus said in a statement to the News. “And placing a golf course in an inner-city setting is exciting, and hopefully will be the same for the residents of Buffalo. I’m very happy to play any role, great or small, to help make the project succeed.”
The plan includes building an education center to serve inner-city youth, triggered by Delaware Park’s status as a racial melting pot for golf, the News reported.
The course designs would also add landscaping for winter recreation, such as cross-country ski trails and sled runs.
The project will cost an estimated $40 million, which Gaughan said would be raised through private foundations and individuals, the News reported.
A spokesman for Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said the mayor only recently received the proposal and wasn’t ready to comment, the News reported.
Kevin Kelly, chairman of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, said the organization also recently received the proposal and hasn’t had a chance to properly review it.
“We would advance this with prudence and care,” Kelly told the News.
But David Colligan, who chaired the organization from 2008 to 2010, was excited by the project’s possibilities.
“It’s a great proposal,” Colligan said. “I am convinced Buffalo could have the second-best arboretum in the country and certainly the second-best designed by Olmsted, with the original layout and planting plan designed by Olmsted himself.” Colligan placed Boston’s Arnold Arboretum ahead of South Park’s potential one, the News said.
The plan also drew praise from Francis R. Kowsky, author of “The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System.”
“In my opinion, anything that would restore South Park to more like its original condition would be a positive result for the citizens of the city,” Kowsky told the News. “They could have free access to the parkland the way it was designed to be.”
Kowsky also applauded the intent to provide the non-golfing public with more access to the Delaware Park meadow.
Gaughan said he got the idea of reaching out to Nicklaus Design in February 2014 while running around Delaware Park and thinking about the disparity between public and private golf courses, the News reported.
“That’s when I thought of my brother, who works for Nicklaus Design in Moscow, telling me these stories of great courses overseas,” Gaughan said of his older brother, Vincent. “I thought, ‘Why not Buffalo?’ ”
Vincent Gaughan arranged for a meeting with Nicklaus, his younger brother told the News. But first, Kevin Gaughan proposed his idea in a letter to the golf legend.
“My idea is that you, the world’s finest golf course designer, collaborate with Olmsted, the world’s foremost landscape architect, to create a public space for the benefit of all,” Gaughan wrote.
The proposal appealed to Nicklaus, who has personally designed 290 courses in 41 countries, with 45 more under development. Seventy have been ranked by major industry publications on Top 100 lists.
Gaughan met with Nicklaus last month in Florida, where Nicklaus expressed his enthusiasm for and commitment to the project, the News reported.
John Reese, Nicklaus Design’s CEO who attended the meeting, said Jack Nicklaus liked the idea of redesigning the golf course—built in 1930 inside the 376-acre Delaware Park—because it was in an Olmsted-designed park and used by inner-city residents, the News reported.
Nicklaus also found being part of a solution to restore Olmsted’s Arboretum in South Park appealing because it’s an interest of his, Reese said. He has about 100 different varieties of trees and shrubs at his South Florida home.
“He lit up on that idea,” Reese said. “Olmsted is a very renowned architect in the golf world. His ideas were unbelievably unique and ahead of his time.”
Olmsted designed the 155-acre South Park in 1894 as an arboretum with more than 2,300 types of trees, shrubs and plants, but only remnants of his vision remained after the golf course, which takes up about one-third of the park, was installed in 1915, the News reported.
Reese said another factor in Nicklaus’ interest was his close personal friendship with Jeremy Jacobs, the Chairman of the Delaware North hospitality firm whose home grounds in East Aurora, N.Y. were designed by Olmsted.
Reese himself also has developed an affinity for Buffalo, the News reported.
“I was downtown walking around the lake, and I thought ‘This is a great place,’ ” Reese said of an excursion around Hoyt Lake. “I know the city is trying to come back. Being someone from New York for many years and seeing what’s going on in Buffalo, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to do something that helps Buffalo?’ And I think that’s Jack’s view, too.”
Reconstructing the Delaware Park golf course would cost $4 million, Gaughan estimated, and $10 million would be needed to build the South Buffalo course, the News reported.
About $4 million would be needed to restore the Arboretum, Gaughan said.
The plan also calls for $10 million, including construction and curriculum costs, for the education center at a location to be determined.
Gaughan said another $12 million would be sought for a perpetual trust, with the interest paying for the annual operation and maintenance of the golf courses and the education center’s maintenance and programming costs.
Nicklaus Design officials are willing to help raise funds, and the United States Golf Association has offered support, Gaughan told the News.
“As for your work to obtain project financing, and your plan to seek both private-sector and foundation funds, I want to reiterate our willingness to render any assistance we can to make this project come to pass,” Reese said in a June 9 letter to Gaughan. “Both Jack and our firm possess relationships with several national philanthropic organizations. We are pleased to employ those relationships on behalf of this worthy endeavor.”
Reese also suggested the courses could charge higher green fees for non-Buffalo residents and out-of-state golfers, boosting the revenues needed to maintain the courses.
Gaughan doesn’t want the fees for Buffalo residents to go up, the News reported.
“We’re excited to do this,” Reese said. “The Nicklaus companies want to work with everyone to get this done as efficiently as possible.”
Golf courses inside Olmsted parks have been a source of controversy, the News noted.
Golfers, especially those who can’t afford private courses, appreciate the chance to tee up. But many want the parks restored as Olmsted imagined them, without golf.
With that in mind, Gaughan said he thought about moving the Delaware Park course, frequently used by African-Americans, to an East Side location, but he couldn’t find a suitable site. Gaughan also found that many black golfers he spoke with had a deep affection for the Delaware Park site.
“It’s the golf course for everybody,” golfer Kane Cook said on a recent day while hitting some balls.
He and several other golfers expressed excitement over the possibility of Nicklaus redesigning the course.
“I would think that would be great,” Tony Smith said. “He could truly make this an exciting place. I’d even be out here helping him,” Smith laughed.
Wayne Geist, who lives near the park, said the idea of a Nicklaus-designed course was “fascinating.”
Kelly Funderburk, after using a 7-iron to hit a ball into the wind on the par-3 seventh hole, went further.
“If that were to happen, it would be a miracle, especially if the prices were to stay the same,” Funderburk told the News. “It would be phenomenal, because I’ve golfed at a couple of his courses.”
The site eyed for the South Buffalo golf course is a brownfield adjacent to South Park, the News reported.
The 201 acres include landfills, wetlands, slopes and railroad tracks, reducing the usable area for golf to 62 acres, according to a “South Buffalo Golf Course Feasibility Study” prepared in 2014 for the City of Buffalo and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy.
Nicklaus helped to design Donald Trump’s new course in the Bronx, New York—Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point—on a former landfill without trees, Reese noted. Chris Cochran, the company’s senior designer, visited the South Buffalo site and thought it had considerable potential, Reese added.
Cochran was also enthusiastic about Delaware Park. “He just loved the layout,” Reese said.
“We get plenty of opportunities to do golf courses that are successful on the coasts and up in the mountains for very wealthy people,” Reese told the News. “It’s pretty neat to do a golf course in a city that everyone can use and is open to everyone.”
Gaughan sees providing educational and job opportunities to minority youth as a key part of the project, the News reported.
The education center is envisioned as a collaboration with the Buffalo Public School District and the University at Buffalo to instruct inner-city youth and provide job training in botany, land restoration, water reclamation, horticulture and conservation.
Reese said the educational component also appealed to Nicklaus.
“That stuff is really attractive to Jack, to me, to everyone in our company,” Reese said. “If you get 100 to 200 people young people involved each year that weren’t before, that’s a great thing to do.”
Colligan said he was “thrilled” at the prospect of an education center being tied into a restored arboretum, which he said would be “a learning laboratory and entry point for youth to learn about the sciences.”
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