NZ: Golfers continue to play Gulf Harbour CC after sudden closure
Golfers blindsided by the sudden closure of a prestigious club on Auckland’s Whangaparāoa Peninsula are taking matters into their own hands and continuing to use the abandoned course.
In July, the Gulf Harbour Country Club – a former training ground of world champion Lydia Ko – closed with immediate effect, leaving some members who had already paid hefty fees feeling short-changed.
As the course gradually falls into disrepair, some members are getting their last shots in, while also coming out swinging at the club’s owner and director.
Young adults were making the most of the newly free course, which normally had a price tag of $75 for 18 holes for affiliated members. Makeshift flagsticks had been placed in the holes by some golfers keen to keep playing as long as possible.
They said it was a shame to see the club – a former host of the New Zealand Open – go to waste, but he planned to continue playing until the greens were too overgrown.
“This is a beautiful golf course and it’s been left to wrack and ruin, when it’s been such a championship course.
“It’s affected a lot of people’s lives that were members here and people that have bought houses around the course.”
Throughout its history, various developers had attempted to turn parts of the golf course land into housing – and members were scared the current owner would try to do the same.
But the land had an encumbrance on it, meaning it could only be used as a green space until the end of the millennium.
Keep Whangaparāoa’s Green Spaces president Nigel Varey, whose house backed onto the ninth hole, said residents around the course were strongly opposed to more large-scale development at the end of the already congested peninsula.
“People can start building tomorrow; across the road, they can build seven-storey apartments,” he said.
“If all that as-of-right development happened, there would be a huge increase in traffic. Then to take away the green space and turn that into more housing, it’s chaos.”
He hoped the course would find a new buyer to restore it to its former glory.
But in the meantime, he did not mind people playing it for as long as they could.
“It’s meant to be a golf course, so good on them.”
SOURCE: https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/10/11/golfers-continue-to-use-abandoned-course-after-sudden-closure/
