The City's celebrated public golf
renaissance will be on display
next month when millions of viewers around the world tune in to watch
Tiger Woods and 69 other top golfers play the World Golf
Championships-American Express Championship at Harding Park.
But
while business boosters say the tournament could generate millions in
tournament-related tourism, neighborhood park advocates claim Harding
Park's new $16 million face-lift and its Professional Golf
Association-mandated 18 gardeners drain resources that would be better
spent on local parks catering to a wider range of residents.
Despite
the tournament, which is paying The City $1 million, San Francisco's
five public golf courses barely broke even last year and are not
expected to make a profit this year, as revenues and expenditures are
both anticipated to come in at $10.9 million, according to a new report
from the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.
In the last fiscal year, Harding and
Fleming golf courses netted a
mere $100,000, bringing in $5.4 million, while the Lincoln Golf Course
lost money.
San Francisco Parks Foundation President Isabel Wade
said the golf courses have not lived up to a 2002 agreement to put back
into an open space fund the money spent on the golf course.
The
fund directs most golf profits into a special fund used for the
maintenance and operation of the courses. But it also requires the golf
courses to essentially pay back the Recreation and Park Department the
$16 million of state and local money spent on Harding Park.
Wade and other critics say the golf
courses have been too slow to
contribute to the open space fund, contributing just $300,000 in the
last fiscal year and a projected $500,000 in the current fiscal year.
"This is not what we signed on for," she said.
Department spokeswoman Rose Marie Dennis said the department is
complying with the 2002 legislation.
"If people have a bone to pick with the
dedicated golf fund, they should have taken it up at the time," she
said.
She
said the five golf courses have been profitable over the past 80 years,
and they would be again in the near future. She called the revamped
Harding Park on par with the new de Young Museum in terms of long-range
historic importance.
