A golf course designer and\u00a0former New Zealand Open winner says turning Chisholm Park\u00a0into a 12-hole course would rob\u00a0the city of potentially many millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
Greg Turner, who won the NZ\u00a0Open in 1989 and 1997 before\u00a0moving into golf course design,\u00a0said he had always been a fan of\u00a0Chisholm Park and its huge\u00a0potential.<\/p>\n
The future of the course is\u00a0under a cloud\u00a0 as changes proposed for flood-prone South Dunedin might\u00a0 result in\u00a0 the links\u00a0course losing six holes.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s been frustrating looking at\u00a0Chisholm for years, because it\u2019s\u00a0got the real potential to be a\u00a0tourism asset for the city, and\u00a0instead of that, they [the Dunedin\u00a0City Council] don\u2019t look at it that\u00a0way,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018They look at it as just a\u00a0recreational amenity, and as a\u00a0recreational amenity, then 12\u00a0holes is as good as, you know, as\u00a018, but it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I don\u2019t think they fully understand what it could be.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It could remain a community\u00a0asset and be a real asset to the\u00a0city, but they\u2019ve never really\u00a0cottoned on to that.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The course is owned by the\u00a0council on a public reserve.<\/p>\n
He said work needed to be\u00a0done to it to upgrade it and that\u00a0centred\u00a0 on\u00a0 irrigation.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018As it is at the moment, if they\u00a0want to irrigate it, they want to\u00a0charge the club to irrigate it.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018So they don\u2019t irrigate it,\u00a0because they can\u2019t afford it. And\u00a0then, it\u2019s a lose-lose, really.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He said golf tourism was now\u00a0worth more than $400 million\u00a0annually to New Zealand and\u00a0two-thirds of that was in Queenstown. That number did not\u00a0include domestic tourism, airfares or hundreds of millions of\u00a0dollars invested in property.<\/p>\n
More courses were going up\u00a0around Central Otago and\u00a0Queenstown Lakes.<\/p>\n
He said the links \u2014 set beside\u00a0the coast, with sandy, rolling turf\u00a0\u2014 was the course which would\u00a0attract tourists from inland\u00a0Otago.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018They need to upgrade the\u00a0condition of the course considerably. And then when you start to\u00a0get more visitor play and you get\u00a0more national and international\u00a0attention, then there\u2019s more\u00a0money comes in. It becomes self-fulfilling. But there needs to be a\u00a0proper conversation about that,\u00a0and it hasn\u2019t really been had yet.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Chisholm Park had so much\u00a0going for it, he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s a true links golf course,\u00a0which is a rare commodity that is\u00a0hugely appreciated amongst that\u00a0golfing community around the\u00a0world.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018But it\u2019s kind of taken for\u00a0granted here. The truth is the\u00a0views up around Lawyers Head\u00a0there, I mean, they\u2019re as spectacular as anything at Pebble\u00a0Beach [on California\u2019s Monterey\u00a0Peninsula].\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Land beside the coast used to\u00a0be seen as waste land and it had\u00a0been easy to build golf courses\u00a0there. Now it had completely\u00a0changed and coastal areas were\u00a0more valuable and it was near\u00a0impossible to build them there.<\/p>\n
Former Chisholm Park professional Andrew Whiley agreed the\u00a0course was a tourism and a\u00a0community asset.<\/p>\n
Mr Whiley \u2014 a former Dunedin\u00a0City Councillor \u2014 questioned\u00a0why there would be a need to get\u00a0rid of a golf course which was\u00a0held in such high regard nationally.<\/p>\n
When he was the professional\u00a0at the course from 2003-15, there\u00a0had been issues around the\u00a0installation of the Tahuna wastewater pipe and sand dunes disappearing, but nothing had come of\u00a0either of those, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A golf course designer and\u00a0former New Zealand Open winner says turning Chisholm Park\u00a0into a 12-hole course would rob\u00a0the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-490611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}