Otter Creek Golf Course is a gem — about that there is little debate. For instance, the course gets 96.6 percent positive feedback from nearly 200 golfer reviews at golfnow.com.
But a debate does loom over whether the City of Columbus is Otter Creek’s best steward. Its management board earlier this month recommended the city sell the nearly 60-year-old municipal course.
“We don’t think it’s right to ask taxpayers, nor is the city necessarily able, to make the investment in current and future capital requirements to return the course to its full prominence and remain commercially viable,” board chairman John McCormick said in an official statement.
In addition to Otter Creek, the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department also has Greenbelt and Par 3 golf courses in its portfolio. That’s a whole lot of holes for city parks to manage and maintain, especially while undertaking redevelopment of the former FairOaks Mall as a parks property.
That said, corporate legacy and community character, if not perhaps historic preservation, are also part of this discussion. Can those be found in a city golf course? Should they be?
Legendary Columbus industrialist and Cummins leader J. Irwin Miller dedicated Otter Creek as a public golf course in 1964. Miller mused at its dedication why his company, Cummins, would spend “A million dollars and more” on a golf course and clubhouse, instead of perhaps trying to get its taxes cut or lobby for less government spending.
“The answer is that we would like to see this community come to be not the cheapest community in America, but the very best community of its size in the country,” Miller said. “We would like to see it become the city in which the smartest, the ablest, the best young families anywhere would like to live … a community that is open in every single respect to persons of every race, color and opinion, that makes them feel welcome and at home here. …
“Our concern is to help get the most for our dollar, to help build this community into the best in the nation. And we are happy to pay our share, whether in work, or in taxes, or in gifts like this one.”
Sentiment aside, a million dollars and more doesn’t go as far as it used to. The Otter Creek board is concerned about the course’s long-term viability. That’s responsible stewardship.
Perhaps a suitable private entity committed to maintaining Indiana’s only Robert Trent Jones-designed golf course can give Otter Creek the TLC and long-term vision it needs to thrive another 60 years. Private ownership could lure additional investment and build on Otter Creek’s already magnetic appeal as a destination course. McCormick noted Otter Creek is still “marginally profitable” and urged the city, if it decides to sell, to condition any transaction on Otter Creek remaining “a premier public course.”
Mayor Jim Lienhoop and the Columbus City Council will need to make tough choices that factor not just Otter Creek’s future, but also what’s in the best interests of the City of Columbus and its taxpayers.
In making those decisions, we urge the city to be transparent with this publicly-owned asset. Before any decisions are made, the public needs to know much more about Otter Creek’s physical and fiscal condition, as well as how any prospective ownership would align with J. Irwin Miller’s vision and gift.
