The National Park Service’s plan to overhaul the public golf course in Rock Creek Park received final approval Thursday from the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), despite opposition from environmental groups and D.C. residents.
During its monthly meeting, the commission reached its decision following hours of public testimony from opponents and supporters of the rehabilitation plan. More than 175 people signed up to speak during the meeting, which lasted until late Thursday evening.
Before the vote was taken, Teri Goodmann, chair of the NCPC, acknowledged the many concerns and revisions made to the plan.
“Not everybody got what they wanted,” Goodmann said. “But [debate] came out of a great love of this place.”
She cited a recent tour of the course that spoke to the need for community support behind a new vision.
“I was frankly appalled by the condition of the place with the invasives,” Goodmann said. “The neglect is there, clearly. But the dedication is there.”
The renovation, proposed last year, is expected to take two years to complete. The National Park Service, which owns the course, announced in April that work on the project would start this fall.
Funding is estimated to cost between $25 million and $35 million and would come from the National Links Trust, a local nonprofit group awarded a 50-year lease in 2020 to operate Rock Creek, East Potomac and Langston, the three public golf courses in Washington.
The Rock Creek course has fallen into severe disrepair over the past few decades. Just 14 of its 18 holes are playable, and it is the least played of the District’s public courses. Supporters of the rehabilitation plan said it would make the course more enjoyable, open it up to a wider range of players and make it an example of what municipal golf can be.
Rick Curtis called in to the meeting to support the planned changes to the course, saying that he and his wife walk and hike in Rock Creek Park daily, but he added that “making the golf course playable and accessible and viable is important, too.”
Will Smith, co-founder of the National Links Trust, said in a statement to The Washington Post regarding the plan’s approval that “this would not have been possible without the support of our community, and we are forever indebted to them for their steadfast belief in our plan and organization.”
“We look forward to building an affordable, accessible, equitable, and engaging future,” Smith said.
Critics of the plan, which would remove more than 1,000 trees, said it would do significant environmental damage that would destroy animal and insect habitats that cannot be recovered. They also argued that the NCPC was ignoring climate change issues and the impact that tree removal would have on the environment and air quality in Washington.
Leaders of environmental groups in the Washington region called the proposed changes a “cause for alarm” in an October letter to Brian Joyner, the National Park Service’s acting superintendent for Rock Creek Park.
“We need to focus on mitigating the effects of climate change,” Barbara Zia, president of the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia, said in her testimony to the commission on Thursday. “To be clear, we support the rehabilitation of the golf course, but we oppose the excesses of the current plan, especially the removal of more than 1,000 trees, including hundreds of large, healthy canopy trees.”
While many of the plan’s critics said they recognized the course needed to be improved, several said they would prefer the course be closed altogether and the land allowed to be reforested.
