Despite a consensus to build a new clubhouse at Beaver Meadow Golf Course, Concord City Councilors wondered whether the prolonged debate over this project had been productive or poisonous. 

The plan for a new $5.9 million building at the city-owned course was approved in a 12-2 vote Thursday, with only Stacey Brown, of ward five, and Michele Horne, of ward two, voting against it.

Since the end of 2023, the last time councilors faced a vote to build a new clubhouse, the plan on the table slimmed in size and price. The main funding for the project shifted from residents to, largely, golfers. A nonprofit formed with a mission to make the course more accessible to a wider array of people in Concord and pledged to raise funds for the building. 

A year was spent on architects designing, and committees considering, a slate of different design options that never saw a council vote. Despite a main plea from city residents ahead of the last vote for more public input and transparency, the approved plan has spent only a few weeks in the sunlight.

Did those who opposed the project take their scrutiny too far? Did defenders of the clubhouse lose touch with the average city taxpayer’s wants and needs? Did the tug between those points of view drown out calls for compromise or deliver one?

Between citizens, let alone councilors, conversations about the golf course have been pointed and dismissive. Those who saw the clubhouse as an investment in an expensive sport often drew hard socioeconomic lines between people who golf and people who struggle to pay their taxes. Many course users rejected that dichotemy. Some supporters of the project portrayed people with price concerns as overexaggerating, saying the few extra dollars on a tax bill could be offset by slimming down daily indulgences. 

Both sides pleaded with the other for more compassion. 

In the lead up to the project’s approval, councilor Brown fixated on course operations, questioning, among other things, why the course’s pros get to pocket a significant portion of the cost of a lesson and why the city pays for them to enter tournaments at other courses. She wanted to know why high schools from surrounding areas get a discount to use the course when their tax dollars don’t support it and why youth golf camps and lessons aren’t better advertised through the parks and recreation department. She inquired about the city’s practice of billing different groups varying rates to host events at the course. She maintained that she doesn’t trust that the course will pull in enough revenue to reimburse taxpayers on the debt. 

Brown’s pursuit of these questions often garnered audible scoffs, or applause, from members of the public attending public meetings and pushback from city staff. 

“You're really trying to cause a slow death to this clubhouse and I’m sick of it,” At-Large Councilor Fred Keach said to Brown Thursday. 

Councilor Nathan Fennessy, also in a citywide seat, found much of the debate offensive to city staff and officials working with good intentions, and said golfers were held to stereotypes about the sport. He was hopeful, he said, they could finally approve the clubhouse and start “rowing together.” 

Brown remained steadfast. 

“My concern is that we are prioritizing growing the game of golf over our residents,” she said at a Tuesday hearing.

The way Ward Nine councilor Kris Schultz saw it, the added eighteen months and the back-and-forth delivered not only a better plan for the clubhouse but better oversight of the course from city leaders. She has previously defended Brown and other residents’ right to drill into the details. Schultz was not the only councilor on Thursday who voiced wanting to see more intentional management of the course. 

“I think some of these questions have been really healthy to raise,” she said. “I feel like we need to keep those on the table and keep looking at it in that way.”

Judith Kurtz, also in an at-large seat, instead was frustrated with “what has felt like the absence of a reasonable conversation in the public sphere.” Even while approving the project and affirming its value to the community, though, she also said she was putting faith in the city manager to ensure that course fees and management would be more organized going forward and in the Friends of the Beav to fulfill their fundraising promise. 

While the clubhouse plan promises to spare taxpayers, who have long covered the cost of other improvements at the course, and will do so again next year. Tax dollars have paid for the more than $2 million irrigation installation project spread out over the last few years, the final phase of which was part of the budget approved Thursday. The parking lot replacement — $900,000 approved last year — is debt tied to course revenue, but at a regular council meeting on Monday, the council will weigh another $150,000 for it after costs for the project went up. 

Mayor Byron Champlin said the city found a palatable way to get the clubhouse built. 

“In the end, the conversation did make the project better,” he said in an interview. “I wish the tone had been different.”

 

Catherine  McLaughlin  can be reached at  cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.