EarthGolf

With only the tenacity only a government entity can afford, The Crossings at Carlsbad near San Diego, California will open its doors on Saturday.

Stalled numerous times by the California Coastal Commission and other environmental agencies, the course has been routed and rerouted, configured and reconfigured nearly a dozen times. Along the way, an Indian burial ground was discovered. So were dinosaur bones. Then a tragic plane crash struck the third hole a few weeks before the planned opening.

The course’s designer, Greg Nash, said The Crossings was “by far” the toughest project he has worked in his 35-year career. This is coming from a guy who once encountered an eight-year delay on a course in Roseville because of environmental concerns over endangered fairy shrimp and also built a six-course complex in Las Vegas that began on rock piles.

That was nothing compared to the curveballs The Crossings threw at him.

Any person wondering about the sanity of government need not worry anymore. If $68 million is an acceptable amount of money for a golf course, then we certainly have reached the Gilded Age.

Let’s do a quick calculation to see how long it will take for the City of Carlsbad to get it’s initial investment back. The rates for the golf course vary from $60-$120. Let’s be optimistic and say they average $100. Let’s also be optimistic that they average 75,000 rounds a year. That comes to $7.5 million dollars a year, or 9 years to just get their money back. (No debt service, no maintenance, no employees, no insurance…). If we’re a little more realistic and they average $75 a round and get 50,000 rounds a year, they’re looking at $3.75 million a year in revenue or 18 years to get $68 million back. Quite frankly, I don’t understand how the citizens would put up with this sort of abuse.

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