Golf courses going wild in retirement
Return to more natural state can benefit plants, wildlife, people
There was scraggly grass in one sand trap and wooden blocks and a toy castle in another, evidence of children at play. People were walking their dogs on the fairway, which was looking rather ragged and unkempt. This was only to be expected.
Nowadays, these grounds are mowed just twice a year and haven’t been doused with pesticides or rodenticides since 2018, which was when this 157-acre stretch of land stopped being the San Geronimo Golf Course and began a journey toward becoming wild, or at least wilder, once again.
A small number of shuttered golf courses around the country have been bought by land trusts, municipalities and nonprofit groups and transformed into nature preserves, parks and wetlands. Among them are sites in Detroit, Pennsylvania, Colorado, the Finger Lakes of upstate New York and at least four in California.
“We quickly recognized the high restoration value, the conservation value, and the public access recreational value,” said Guillermo Rodriguez, California state director with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which bought the San Geronimo course in Marin County for $8.9 million in 2018 and renamed it San Geronimo Commons.
During a recent tour of the land, which sits low in San Geronimo Valley, less than an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, Rodriguez motioned to rolling hills that serve as habitat for wildlife, including hawks that were wheeling overhead. “On either side, you have public lands,” he said. “This was the missing link.”
The restoration of the San Geronimo land is still underway. Floodplains will be reconnected, and a fish barrier has been removed, allowing access to more robust migratory and breeding grounds for endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. Trails are planned that would skirt sensitive habitat, making the land a publicly accessible ecological life raft, starkly different from its time as a golf course.
“It’s a great place, and it’s beautiful,” said Charles Esposito, 76, a retiree who was enjoying a recent stroll. “I love it.”
In recent years, the golf industry has taken steps to lighten its environmental toll in places by using less water, sowing pollinator-friendly plants and decreasing pesticide and fertilizer use.
Yet the resources and chemicals needed for pristine emerald turf have made the sport an environmentalists’ bête noire. America’s roughly 16,000 golf courses use 1.5 billion gallons of water a day, according to the U.S. Golf Association, and are collectively treated with 100,000 tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium a year.
More golf courses have closed than opened since 2006. A return to nature, or a version of it, is still a relative rarity for former golf courses, most of which end up in the hands of commercial or residential developers, according to the National Golf Foundation. For a golf course to be turned into a public green space, an unlikely set of stars need to align. There has to be a willing seller, and, crucially, a conservation-minded buyer who can afford to not just purchase the land but to restore it. According to Eric Bosman, an urban planner with the design and planning firm Kimley-Horne, 28 former courses were transformed into public green spaces between 2010 and October 2022.