A breifing:

I, along with a few others, have been petitioning the county to get a new disc golf facility put in. We have one course that is about 2 years old and they have had problems with the neighbors of the course complaining (its also a poorly designed, short course). At one time the county said that they would like to put in another course, but they had to bring it to the commitee. So after a year of negotiations, the commitee's only reply is this

"The Parks Commission did rank various activities/facilities as to how good of a fit they are with the Parks Commission's role and (separately) their level of priority for near term action. Disc golf ranked at the bottom on both lists. I'll attach that ranking for your reference so you can see the types of activities that ranked higher. I think one of the problems is that virtually every course we have any knowledge of has reports of significant problems in terms of the behavior of users (trash, alcohol abuse, loitering, etc) - and that may be souring some of the Commission members a bit."

I tried to instill the fact that a club could take care of many of these problems (alcohol, and course abuse), but the townships said they would not approve of a club, and if we continued to try and run one, the course would be removed. Oddly enough when the course was first installed a club was endorsed by the township and even showed up in the events fliers mailed to the public. 2 years later they said we are not allowed to have an "organized" league night anymore. Is there anything we can do to better appeal to the county commitee, or even a way to run a club that is not approved of by the township?

Thanks for any info.

-Travis

I think you could maybe approach things from a financial perspective. Some type of revenue generation process may be the only way to persuade the powers that it will be worth their efforts. I'd have to believe Holland is suffering or will suffer a drop in tourism as a result of the economy and I know that's one of their important revenue streams. The following article was published in the National Park & Rec magazine and I detailed a variety of ways to produce income to offset problems like trash collection. Pay for play has also been shown to raise the level of clientele who play the course and reduce some of the other problems beyond trash.

http://www.nrpa.org/content/default.aspx?documentId=5214

Excellent article, Chuck. Well done.... :)

Thanks. Several people have told me it's helped with getting approval for their course projects in the past few years in some way. This article and some other have links here: www.pdga.com/course-development (http://www.pdga.com/course-development) as resources for future course proposals.

I have read Chuck's article and it is indeed an excellent one.

Here in Virginia at New Quarter Park, we charge a fee of $3.00 daily/$25.00 for an annual pass. I was recently told by parks administration that disc golfers represent 10% of the users of the park, yet account for 95% of the revenues collected. In addition to the greens fees, we also have a disc golf pro shop at the park that brings in revenue.

None of this was a pre-requisite to building the course - they wanted a course - but it helps ensure our continued presence there and could be used as an example to show other localities how disc golf can be a positive investment.

I can also confirm Chuck's comments about how pay-to-play courses generally see a more responsible clientele. At NQ I think this is true not only because of the fees, but also because it is a nicer and more difficult course.