Becky Peirce golf course

The Becky Peirce Municipal Golf Course has been closed since Jan. 1. (Paul Gattis/pgattis@al.com)

The Becky Peirce Municipal Golf Course off Airport Road, which has been closed since the first of the year, may never reopen.

Huntsville city officials plan to provide the city council at least three options in the coming weeks regarding the golf course and one of those options is expected to be how to use the land if it's not utilized as a golf course.

It's the first time at a city council meeting that the idea has been broached about not reopening the 18-hole course visible along Memorial Parkway.

City Administrator John Hamilton briefed the council during Thursday night's meeting as the council considered, and eventually approved, a $12,500 consulting contract with Raven Golf from Nashville.

The contract calls for Raven to present two options for the council's consideration:

Renovating the golf course to operate as a mid- to high-end municipal course.

Continue with the 18-hole course with a smaller footprint in John Hunt Park.

Both options, Hamilton said, will cost the city "multiple millions of dollars" that is not budgeted.

"We will probably lay out three options," Hamilton told AL.com following the meeting. "Two would be (for a) golf course and one not being a golf course."

Hamilton also told the council the administration would likely present an option not tied to using the land as a golf course.

"There's still a good bit of question about whether or not we should have a golf course and, if so, what is the form that golf course should be," Hamilton told the council.

Issues with the golf course arose last year when the council voted to terminate the contract with Robertson Golf Management - which managed the course as a partner with the city -- because the condition of the course had dramatically deteriorated.

With no entity to manage the course, the council closed it, effective Jan. 1, with the hopes of identifying a new managed through a request-for-proposal process.

That RFP, though, yielded only one bidder which city administrators said was not an adequate bid.

Raven Golf had talked with city officials about submitting a bid but ultimately didn't and the city reached out with a consulting contract to assess the viability of the south end of the park continuing as a golf course.

"The contractor will bring us their analysis and we will bring you options as to what we think is the best way ahead and what are the estimated costs associated with those various options," Hamilton told the council.

While it's the first public discussion of possibility closing the course, it perhaps was inevitable that such a consideration would take place at some point.

That's how Councilman Bill Kling interpreted it even while acknowledging that Thursday night's meeting was the first time he had heard the option of closing the course discussed.

"I don't want to read too much into it," said Kling, who has been the most vocal advocate on the council of reopening the course. "I think it was just an open-ended reason to do this contract, let this company look into it."

Councilman Mark Russell also asked if the council could receive data regarding the usage of the golf course in recent years to aid in the decision-making process. Traffic on golf courses has declined nationwide in recent years.

Hamilton said "you can get into a chicken or egg argument on what happened there" regarding the usage of the golf course. Did conditions worsen because rounds were in decline - which would diminish revenue to maintain the course - or were rounds in decline because the course conditions were becoming worse?

Hamilton said Raven gave a timeline of about two weeks to complete their study and that city administrators could present options on the golf course to the council in about a month.

Whatever the council ultimately decides, Hamilton said the land will remain a part of John Hunt Park. It has been zoned for recreational use and to change that zoning classification would require a referendum by city voters, he said.

"We have absolutely no intention of doing that," Hamilton said.