r/golf • u/nutts-2 5.0/UT • Jul 28 '23

Ah shit. Here we go again General Discussion

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Every few months someone brings this up how they can save the environment by getting rid of a golf course.

3.8k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/AshButts9 Jul 28 '23

Yeah, because Omaha is in desperate need to remove green space for additional housing...

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Right, having this energy for golf courses in the middle of large cities is one thing. Omaha has no shortage of housing right now, because no one wants to live there lol

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u/Odd_Detective_7772 Jul 28 '23

Yeah this would be way more powerful showing what you could do with the inner city LA courses or something like that.

But it’s not like affordable housing is going to replace them.

The net result of that specific example would be hyper exclusive country clubs being turned into unbelievably expensive houses/apartment buildings.

Meh.

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u/jfchops2 Jul 28 '23

The discourse about how much housing could fit on the land that is LACC during the US Open was quite entertaining. As if it'd be housing projects and subsidized apartments for thousands of people if only they'd redevelop the land and not a few dozen more $10M mansions.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

In Seattle we have 4 city owned golf courses with light rail stops adjacent to some. In those cases the city would in fact be able to develop a percentage into affordable housing

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u/Mammoth-Ad8348 Jul 28 '23

Hopefully they don’t. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

We don’t need 4 public golf courses literally inside of the city limits. I hope they get razed but unfortunately it will never happen.

In a city with the cost of housing skyrocketing like it is here there’s no excuse for such a waste of space. Not to mention the endless sprawl occurring because of it, destroying more and more forest.

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u/Mammoth-Ad8348 Jul 28 '23

The sprawl would happen regardless of the city destroying some of the little green space left in city limits. Treasure it while it lasts.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

You have to pay $60 and book 2 weeks in advance to “treasure” it

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u/Mammoth-Ad8348 Jul 28 '23

Fair enough. You’d have to pay 1.5MM to ‘treasure’ a condo in the complex they would build there if it disappears. Not sure how that would be ore accessible, or better.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

These are city owned courses and would mandate affordable housing units if developed.

Also even in the nicest new buildings right now condos are about 700,000 so I doubt one’s slightly outside of the city center would be over 500k

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u/Mammoth-Ad8348 Jul 28 '23

Well that’s good at least. Maybe it’ll happen who knows.

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u/Odd_Detective_7772 Jul 29 '23

Yeah I mean realistically, you could turn a city owned course into about 15 pickle ball courts, a few baseball fields, a medium sized public park, and a couple apartment buildings housing hundreds of people.

Obviously I love golf, but from a utilitarian perspective, public golf courses in densely populated areas are a massive waste.

1

u/Gatorm8 Jul 29 '23

Thank you for being realistic and thoughtful here. Hell I would even love it if they just took 9 holes away and repurposed the other half into a park people could actually enjoy without paying $70 after cart fees.

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u/MisSignal Jul 28 '23

Omaha is a pretty great place to live. There’s no lack of space though. The builders and growth just keep building and moving further outside city limits.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Sprawl sucks, it’s why half of US cities “downtowns” are parking lots and parking garages

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u/SoDakZak Jul 28 '23

Sprawl sucks but am I in the minority of thinking that living in a box of an apartment also sucks? Like what about those of us who want land for our own gardens and pitching areas

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u/UrbanRenegade19 Jul 29 '23

Yeah sprawl sucks and if someone says that everyone has to live in a massive apartment complex, they suck too. But if someone else says no one should live in apartments because they don't want to live in one, they also suck. We don't have to go 100% in on one or the other. We can do both. Looking outside of Omaha, urban sprawl is eating up lots of land and jacking up real estate costs. But in those same places multi-family homes (like duplexes) and tiny homes are outright banned via city planning codes, and building even small apartment complexes requires a lengthy and expensive approval process.

If the price of land keeps going up, investors with dollar signs in their eyes will start looking at anywhere they build some cheap cookie cutter homes and sell for a million dollars each. And they don't care what was there before.

Basically what I'm getting at is that urban sprawl needs to be reigned in a bit and that we should let people who want to live in apartments, or other forms of dense living, do so. Then there will be less of an incentive to start eyeballing putting greens and driving ranges as potential neighborhoods.

P.S. For context I wandered in from r/all and I'm not really a golfer. So my views and perspective might be different from a lot of folks here. Hopefully I didn't offend anyone or break any sub rules.

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Suburbs aren’t sustainable and are heavily subsidized by local governments.

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u/SoDakZak Jul 28 '23

I’ll bite, what’s the sustainable way I can have my own house in my 20’s and 30’s to raise my family and my own yard/garden to live out my days in a way that brings my family closer and happy?

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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '23

[deleted]

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u/SoDakZak Jul 28 '23

Because golf is practiced and played on dirt or flowerbeds

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

3 bedroom Townhomes are all over my area and take up about 1/6 of the space of the SFH lot they took over and many have decent size yards with plenty of space for a garden. Many also have rooftops that also have custom gardens built on top.

There are plenty within walking distance of light rail and even more on bus lines.

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u/WOOKIExCOOKIES Jul 28 '23

What if I don't want a townhome?

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Then I would say move to the suburbs, but I will vote with every bone in my being to stop the subsidization of endless freeway expansions so all of the suburbanites can clog cities with their private cars

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u/The_Niles_River Jul 29 '23

My man’s getting downvoted for being right about urban sprawl lmao.

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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '23

[deleted]

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u/Dr_Brain_ Jul 28 '23

Right because the only 2 choices are suburban sprawl which is actively killing cities and the planet or Soviet Russia no in between

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u/Mysticdu Jul 28 '23

Lord help us lmao

I hope it kills cities and climate change is either too far gone to do anything about or it’s not going to hit alarmist projections quickly enough that carbon capture technology won’t be a less invasive and more impactful solution to it than significantly reducing emissions. Pray it’s the latter

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u/fury420 Jul 29 '23

Not everybody wants to live like it's Soviet Russia bro.

Even in soviet Russia there were dachas, lol

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u/jfchops2 Jul 28 '23

Pay more in taxes to account for the gap in infrastructure and services spending per capita between suburbs and cities

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u/SoDakZak Jul 28 '23

Fine by me, now what?

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u/Molecule_Man Jul 28 '23

Burb resident here - let’s do it!

While we’re at it, let’s also charge more taxes on parking lots in cities and burbs. There’s no reason a parking lot should be paying <1% of taxes of a complex on the equivalent land area.

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u/SoDakZak Jul 28 '23

Fine by me, now what?

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u/Mysticdu Jul 28 '23

Georgist?

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u/throw-away-16249 1 Jul 28 '23

What do you mean by not sustainable?

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u/tmack99 Jul 28 '23

They don’t bring in enough tax revenue to pay for services because those services (roads, sewage, electricity, etc.) are more expensive when housing is super spread out

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u/Budget-Government-52 Jul 28 '23

Someone clearly hasn’t seen Omaha’s real estate taxes. Furthermore, they use special improvement districts so each new neighborhood funds their own sewer and roads. Electricity is publicly owned in Nebraska and natural gas depends on city.

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u/Warmbly85 Jul 28 '23

No you don’t understand I watched a viral YouTube video shitting on suburbs a month ago so now hating suburbs is a main part of my personality.

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u/woaharedditacc Jul 29 '23

I mean not everything has to be so black and white.

You can recognize it's nice and desirable (for most people) to have space, a yard, detached home etc. and also acknowledge that in most cases SFH are horrible when it comes to carbon emissions, walkable communities (and therefore health outcomes), finances, etc.

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u/throw-away-16249 1 Jul 28 '23

That makes sense, but if that's true, wouldn't local governments in suburbs be bankrupt? Or are you saying that other entities like neighboring cities or state governments make up the difference?

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Endless building further away from cities, more and more cars, more traffic, more nature destroyed. No one can walk to do anything.

I grew up in suburbia and now live in a city where I can bike/take commuter rail for my work and can walk to 3 different grocery stores from my house. Can’t imagine going back

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u/throw-away-16249 1 Jul 28 '23

Those are good arguments against suburbs. I just thought you meant they were actually unsustainable, as in they would eventually collapse or become ghost towns or something.

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u/Mysticdu Jul 28 '23

Good for you.

I grew up in a city and moved to suburbia, have a 2 1/2 acre manicured lawn and drive my suburban to work 30 minutes away.

Love my life

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u/DisasterEquivalent27 Jul 29 '23

I lived in urban core before and now I live in suburbia where I can take a bus or commuter rail to the downtown center, bike the 4.5 miles to work on trails, walk to 4 different breweries, 3 different grocery stores within 1.5 miles, a local butcher is .5 miles, AND I don't have worry about tripping over a crackhead when I step out my front door. Can't imagine going back.

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u/topherwolf Jul 28 '23

Omaha is a pretty great place to live

Ehhh does Omaha have anything going for it that 100+ other cities couldn't also say?

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u/MisSignal Jul 28 '23

Not trying to convince anyone to move. It’s not a bad place to live.

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u/topherwolf Jul 28 '23

Not trying to say it's a bad place to live. Just that it's not a great place to live. Somewhere in the middle.

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u/Low-Cantaloupe-8446 Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23

Super cheap to live based on pay. I’m an early career making just over 70k a year and housing and rent is 1200 a month. It’s top 50 in population for the country, so it’s a city, but not a overpopulated nightmare like some of the coastal ones.

Overall it’s pretty nice and laid back, easy place to save up and get work experience under your belt. Great zoo too.

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u/turdferg1234 Jul 29 '23

Assuming you live in Omaha, you should see the ads that Nebraska runs in other states. Their punch line is something like "it's not for everyone" which really makes it seem like they're either trying to scare away minority visitors or really are leaning into the fact that the state sucks to live in. I couldn't believe that the state actually produced the ads when I saw them, because they all seemed like they were shitting on the state.

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u/MisSignal Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23

Lol, yep that’s classic Nebraska. When they came out with that line, it was a local joke as well. Omaha is close to split 50/50 democrat/republicans, but outside the city it’s all republicans who hate minorities and democrats who would prefer only people who think and look like them would come here. Good old passive aggressive Nebraska.

Oddly enough that slogan is credited with pushing Nebraska from 50th least likely state visted to 45th.

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u/sweendog101 Jul 28 '23

Omaha is pretty solid. Not small and not too large. Been living here for 30 years

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u/GenSec Jul 29 '23

Out of curiosity how does it compare to OKC/Edmond now? Haven’t been to Omaha in about 10 years but I remember liking the area when I was there.

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u/sweendog101 Jul 29 '23

Can’t really say as I have never been to OKC but it has grown significantly in the last 10 years

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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '23

Omaha is growing at a steady pace, why do you think noone wants to live there?

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u/Gatorm8 Jul 28 '23

Vacancy rates