(Another) Leeds golf course to be turned into cycling facility

Local councils should probably stick to the essentials in council life as if anything ever gets built it will half-assed, unlike the original vision and unfit for purpose after a few years. Look at the state of maintenance of the average kids play area or some of the skateparks that now look like some sort of ode to penis graffiti or have a layout thats makes no sense to anyone that's actually ridden a line in a skatepark. 

Get grant, spend on project, fail to maintain, say nobody uses it. I used to use a skatepark for messing about on the MTB and BMX but I gave up after literally having to take my brush and bags to clean up broken bottles and dogshit. That and getting old and my lad lost interest in coming with me. 

It would be interesting to see the exact plans they have for the place - is it another version of Leeds Urban Bike Park on the old Middleton Golf Course? That's excellent but it does take up the ENTIRE site, there's no room for a golf course or anything else there. (there is a network of walking trails in the woods which intersect a couple of times with the bike trails but segregation is very good, it's extremely rare that riders use the paths or walkers use the trails).

Or is it something like a road circuit around the outside which would be compatible with a golf course in the middle (assuming some netting to stop a stray ball going into the bunch!)

I can kind of see where the council is coming from - times are tight and if the place isn't paying for itself, it may even be pressure from the community to open it out to more users more often.

Thanks for taking the time to reply here Dean. 

Clearly this is another council not wanting the expense of upkeep of a golf course and looking for ideas to minimise their costs. 

With an 'abundance' of golf facilities within a few miles of yours, I hope your members will find somewhere to congregate/join. I do sympathise and frankly the idea of a golf/cycle hub isn't a bad one, but who says that the councils are in the business of making sensible decisions. 

Ties in quite nicely with my comment ref WDC who appear to be convinced that they need more golf facilities in our area seemingly against popular support or feeling. I believe this is a financially based decision also (even though the last Golf facility this new one is replacing couldn't make it commercially viable).

Would like to clear up a few of the statements from previous comments. At no point did I ever say that "A lot of our older members here are actually past their golfing days" this is not true we have many golfers aged 65+ and they reley on golf for their physical and social well being.

Some of the statements in the council proposal are incorrect, Golf is in decline say the council, they have obviously not asked England Golf who strongly refuet this statement

The club does not rent the land we rent a building which the club is based, we still pay fees to the council to play on the course.

The club has in excess of 250 members, our conservative estimate is that there are around 15000 rounds of golf played at Temple Newsam a year, we cannot confirm this because it the council who own the figures, the same council who say the Leeds Cycle Superhighway has an estimated one million journeys per year.

Finally the golf club do not object to the provision of the facilities suggested, what we do object to is the fact that they want to close the current golf courses, Temple Newsam is a massive park with many acres of land where Golf and the proposed cycle track can both exist together. If Leeds City Council had consulted the golfers in the first place we could have proposed alternatives but they chose to ignore us. They propose to make the existing club house in a Bike / Cafe Hub why cant this building become a Bike / Golf / Cafe Hub and provide benefits for all.

Room for a golf course and cycle paths, if they compromise - do they need both an 18 and 9 hole course? That’s a lot of course for a small club with limited resources to maintain in good playable condition. What amount of compromise are they prepared to make, because it’s not clear they’re prepared to make any.

My closest course is an 11 hole public course, nothing too challenging but it’s a cheap pay to play public course and popular as a result. Replay the first 7 if you want 18 holes. They also have Footgolf and mini golf to attract more casual users. Despite that its future isn’t assured. Newsam are going to need to be willing to do other things to have any chance of survival. They might be better off embracing the bikes instead of opposing them.

I live next to Temple Newsam, and the Treasurer is right, there is enough room for a Golf Course and cycle trails.

However, when he talks about members of the club, there are only 112 of them according to Leeds CC proposal documents, and the course is costing £200,000 per year to maintain. Alongside that, the Pay as You Play option is only used by an average of 20 people a day, so around 25 people a day are using two golf courses, and costing the City £200,000 per year. (Actually, there are more people on the course than this, but many many people just don’t pay, they just sneak onto the course, these are also some of the people complaining)

I’m not sure that LCC are the right people to make a success of this, and fear that the £1,000,000 that they plan to borrow and the £350,000 that they already have for the project will be efficiently spent.

So build a tea room for the older people who don't play golf. ....they can watch the cyclists go by.

One of the most depressing things about nearing the age of 40 is the number of friends who now forego a weekend spin for a round of golf. Cycling is the new golf? If only.

Sorry but golf and golf courses are just evil. Every golf course in the world should be turned into a bike centre.

Probably guessed I don't like golf and golf course owners.

Vive le Velo.

So the treasurer has definitely got his finger on the pulse then...

“We don't see why they need all that space for cycle lanes."

PP

Keep the 9 hole, reduce the fees for golfing to keep that course busy and create a shared facilities centre to let the groups actually interact...