In the Victoria area there are more than a dozen easily accesible golf courses — a few more if you broaden the search to the entire CRD. They range from the ridiculously affordable (and relatively un-challenging) Henderson 9-hole course — just $8.50 for 9 holes, $14.60 if you want to do two rounds as your 18 — to the rather pricey Royal Colwood course where 18 holes will set you back $165 in peak season. I was actually stunned by the range in green fees but that’s nothing compared to club membership, required at about half the local courses. Membership at the world-famous Victoria Golf Club (thanks in part to Bob Hope) will run you $35K plus monthly dues around $250 — and don’t imagine that price earns you the right to wear what’s comfortable.
So it’s no surprise that regulars are up in arms about the Cedar Hill Golf Course scaling back operations in the restaurant. There’s no talk yet of green fee changes but I would suspect that is under consideration (they were dropped for 2011-2012, from $40 to $35 for 18 holes). If you missed the news (or aren’t local), the Cedar Hill Golf Course & Restaurant are collectively running a huge deficit (and have been since 2007); in 2012, they are expected to hit $1M in the red.
Oddly, one of the biggest costs is paying back $187K annually to the Municipality of Saanich (who also operate the golf course) to pay for a $2M irrigation system, installed in 2006. (Here, I’ll make the math easy for you: costly irrigation installed in 2006. In the red since 2007. Hmmmm.) [source, see last bullet point.] A big part of the deficit for the restaurant is projected repairs; but rather than raise food prices (a grilled cheese with fries will cost you only $8 right now) and/or court more use of its banquet room, the knee-jerk reaction is to close the community hangout, popular with seniors.
For seniors, staying active is critical and golf is a popular activity. There’s easily 600 to 700 hectares dedicated to golf courses in the region — this is dwarfed by the 11,500 hectares of parks and trails managed by the CRD alone (municipal, provincial and national parks add even more to the total) and yet golf courses do require an abundance of irrigation and other maintenance, far more than the average park or trail. We also have many recreation centres and other sporting facilities, and a climate that allows for year-round outdoor activity — including, but not limited to golf.
There’s lots of reasons that people pick on golf courses though. They are single-purpose large tracts of land that eschew native vegetation for invasive grasses; they tend toward the elitist (see above dress code link); and they take up some valuable real estate in a market where housing is stupidly expensive.
However, the Cedar Hill Golf Course in particular is special to me.
My grandfather, after retirement, golfed a round there every morning. It was the last thing he did before he had the aneurysm that would put him in hospital and ultimately end his life. The course and its clubhouse/restaurant were his community.
There’s no easy fix for a bill this big. Saanich Municipality is going to have to find a way out of it and unless they have access to a windfall, or some anonymous donors (the membership and monthly fees of just 26 members of the Victoria Golf course would erase Cedar Hill’s deficit), or a Time Lord willing to sort things out, they are going to have to make some tough choices and I doubt they will be popular.
The Municipality of Saanich and Frank Leonard have let this problem simmer for FIVE years without addressing it through an increase in green fees. It’s great that problems get buried in the year leading up to an election and then exhumed a month or so later. Like Victoria, they come up with this surprise reveal a couple months after winning an election when they are safest; and the fickle voters will forget 32 months later when politicians mug for photos and votes.
I know. I was surprised when, of all things, the Oak Bay News revealed so much of the problem here; the TC and tv news have basically blamed the lack of golfers — and it’s true, the numbers have dropped, but that is in part due to (if my math is right) three new golf courses opening in the past 5 years. My guess is that (a) there is a limited supply of golfers and (b) it’s a luxury that can be removed from one’s budget in these “tough economic times.” But, the real challenges here are infrastructure: the irrigation (likely the CRD pushed for this to reduce water usage — and we know how that is rewarded: higher water prices!) and projected repairs and upgrades. It seems like they were still budgeting for an income from their peak usage 10 years ago (71,000 rounds) but that has dropped by about 40 percent to only 42,000 rounds. To try and get more golfers, they reduced the fees but clearly that did not help. Now with the barn doors wide open and the horses miles away they are they discussing a new lock for the doors.
Since the idea of public amenities is now no longer ideologically acceptable, even amenities like golf courses which are highly associated with the middle class have to go. Since they’ve already made a point of it not being profitable, unless some international golf course company can apply some kind of special profit-making methodology like robot greenskeepers (or non-status Mexican ones), it’s going to become development land. Which likely means sorrow and disruption for everyone in the Cook-Cedar Hill neighbourhood.
What I don’t understand is that both Henderson (in Oak Bay) and Juan de Fuca (in… Colwood? View Royal?) seem to be doing just fine with similar green fees — Henderson is dirt cheap. So what gives?