(Seguin) — The Max Starcke Park Golf Course will soon be getting an $8 million makeover. The Seguin City Council on Tuesday approved an item that will allow staff to begin seeking bids for the total renovation of the municipal golf course.
The course has been attracting players to Seguin for decades, but its turf and its infrastructure need to be replaced. Golf Course Manager Bruce Allen walked the council through the many needs of the course. He says this was determined by a study conducted a couple of years ago. He says the new course designs are now in place, and it’s time to move forward with those renovations.
“Two years ago, we hired the National Golf Foundation to come and look at our situation and make recommendations and they came and assessed the course, met with the staff, met with our golfers and this is what they recommended – total replacement and expansion of the greens, total renovation and expansion of the tee boxes, total renovation of the fairways, total replacement and expansion of the irrigation system, total renovation of our sand bunkers and total renovation and expansion of the driving range. The council agreed to that, and they allowed us to hire Brian Ross of Golf Design to come up with a plan and Brian finished that estimate last November and this is what he came up with – a project cost of $8.787,471 – less the ARPer (American Rescue Plan) funds we received so it’s about an $8.1 million project,” said Allen.
The golf course will have to shut down for about a year while the work is done. It’s consistent with the process used by the city of New Braunfels when it redesigned its Landa Park Golf Course several years ago.
City Manager Steve Parker says this is a big investment, but it’s one that he believes will serve the city well.
“When you look at the value of what this means to also our business community, our school districts and so forth. We did a great job of getting and making sure that we reached out to them. We have the Pan American league. We have the chamber of commerce and the school districts all giving letters of support as well because this is important to our community. As we grow and eventually get a conference center and things like that in our community, having this asset will really be a game changer in my opinion but it does take a lot of courage for the city council to make these types of commitments but overall, this is not unordinary. We do supplement parks. I think that is another point that we made. Our parks department probably costs us a million and a half to mow and change the garbage and so forth. They make a $100,000 in revenue and rentals and so forth, so we are subsiding them. This is another quality-of-life asset that yes, we can supplement some but work together to make sure it is minimal so we can move forward with other quality of life projects,” said Parker.
Mayor Donna Dodgen expressed similar comments. She says Seguin has a rich golf history, and it’s important that it be preserved for future generations.
“We deserve nice things, and we deserve things that we can be proud of and we deserve things that we can use to market Seguin. Our library is a prime example of what it does and who it brings, and I really feel our golf course can do that as well. I think that we have a variety of activities, and we have other things to do but this is one piece of what we need to make our community healthier, if I might say that.
We pride ourselves and our history and our longevity and the golf course is a part of that. It is a huge part of that history and pride and so I think we need to take that back because we have lost some of that in the sense of what it looks like honestly and I want to bring that back. I want people to come play here because they know what Starcke Park was and is,” said Dodgen.
The city’s Golf Advisory Board has been a big part of the discussions about the course. Board Chairman Eric Aufderhaar says moving forward with the renovation of the golf course is the right thing to do.
“I want to be clear that I think this is important. We need to do it. I support the whole thing as you have before you. The other thing I was going to say is we have to keep the rates as low as possible for the citizens,” said Aufderhaar.
The city has been open about the need to consider raising rates when the course is reopened, but the council mostly held off on those discussions last night. It is something that will have to be considered, but that rate structure will have to be determined later. It could be an across-the-board rate increase, the city council offer a lower rate to players who live in the city, or there could be some other rate structure developed by the city. Whatever that decision is, it will eventually have to come back to the council for approval.
Meanwhile, the council’s latest action will allow the city to begin seeking bids on the various elements that will be included as part of the total renovation of the course.