JEWEL IN THE ROUGH

The Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course, which has been overrun by grass and weeds since Hurricane Katrina, will require an estimated $11 million to restore the entire facility

Thursday, July 05, 2007

By Fred RobinsonStaff writer

Driving down Prentiss Avenue along the first hole at Joseph M. Bartholomew Municipal Golf Course, anyone who has played several rounds of golf at the facility can't help noticing the huge oak trees that divided the No. 1 and No. 18 fairways are gone.

The missing oaks, the same trees that proved to be an opening-hole nightmare for slicers and a save haven for golfers hitting their approach shots on No. 18, are not the first thing one notices.
Missing is the gem of a golf course that once was 40-something years ago. What one now sees is a vast area that has been overrun by grass, weeds and wild bushes. What years of neglect and lack of funding couldn't kill, Hurricane Katrina did.
The Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course, which sits in the heart of Pontchartrain Park, now is unkempt green space. It is like nearly 80 percent of the houses in the Gentilly Woods-Pontchartrain Park subdivisions -- sitting gutted and waiting for money to fix it up.
The questions facing the course Joseph now are how quickly will it come back, and can it be the catalyst to the rebuilding of the oldest black subdivision in the United States? And should work begin on the golf course while the area's population is, at best, sparse?
"At no time has Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course fallen off the radar," said Ann McDonald, director of the New Orleans Parks and Parkways. "It is a priority. It has not been forgotten, we just have to get the money."
Money has long been a problem for the Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course, named after a New Orleans African-American who designed that course and several others in the metro area.
According to McDonald, it will take nearly $11 million to restore the entire facility -- golf course, driving range, clubhouse and the maintenance building. Although the city has received some donated equipment, its pockets are empty when it comes to the funds needed to restore the course. The city, McDonald says, has slightly more than $1 million in hand for the golf course.
Through freshman state representative J.P. Morrell (D- New Orleans), the city was attempting to get another $6 million from the state to jumpstart the project. However, Morrell said the only monies the city will receive out of the legislative session that ended last week is $400,000. Morrell also said the city is missing a blueprint for how it plans to use the money.
"The city asked for $6.3 million, and of the $4 million that has been set aside, it'll get $400,000 to provide adequate planning for the golf course," Morrell said. "The city needs to get us an itemized list of what's going to be done before it can get the kind of money it's requesting."
Morrell said the kind of planning that's needed is going to take "a couple of months." What it means is the golf course's restoration, at the very least, is a couple of years away.
When the golf course was overtaken by the floodwaters, it was near the completion of a rare capital improvement project. McDonald said between $800,000 and $1 million had been spent to re-do tee boxes, greens and re-sod several fairways. The salt waters that covered the course "killed everything."
"The turf is the golf course, and it was destroyed," McDonald said. "Additionally, some of the natural swales and drainage were destroyed."
Altogether, of the 375 trees the golf course lost, 360 were oak trees.
McDonald said there isn't a time frame to reopen the golf facility, but it will happen -- when the money rolls in. Morrell said there's no chance of that happening before next year's legislative session.
And even if the monies become available next year, the rebuilding of the golf course could take another two years.
King Wells, 73, president of the Pontilly Neighborhood Association and a Pontchartrain Park resident since 1965, believes it's important that something be done soon.
"People don't want to live across the street from a park filled with weeds," Wells said. "The people who lived out here loved the fact that they lived across the street from a golf course, although they didn't play."
But Barry "Mercedes" Gonzalez, an avid golfer whose gutted house sits across the street from the No. 2 green, said bringing back the golf course would have a huge impact on the community.
"That's a no-brainer," Gonzalez said. "It'll definitely speed up the recovery. If you don't see that, you don't have common sense.
"Now (the city) has every opportunity to produce a first-class golf course. I'd like to see a first-class golf course, or to bring it back to the original Joseph Bartholomew design. Don't just bring it back the way it was before."
If there's one thing all parties agree on, the revitalization of the golf course has to be a part of bringing back the homeowners.
Said Morrell: "I don't think you can separate the two. You can't talk about bringing people home and ignore Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course. Part of what is the identity of Pontchartrain Park is Joseph Bartholomew Golf Course. It's an anchor for the community."