New design details were unveiled Thursday by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to improve the historic Hiawatha Golf Club. The course has been losing thousands of dollars annually due to declining use, and the city needed to have a reckoning on how to handle its future.
The main question is why it's happening, and Al Bangoura with the Park Board says water - too much of it - has been a problem.
Hiawatha Golf Course has had four major floods in the last 75 years," Bangoura explained. "That's four 100-year floods in 75 years. Each time we fought back Mother Nature."
It is built near Lake Nokomis, originally just a swampy area downstream of Minnehaha Creek. Floods were part of the natural process but often swamped the course. Repairs from floods, including a major closure in 2014, cost the city millions.
But it's not just as simple as keeping the course dry. There's a community aspect to it.
The course has significant history to the south side's Black community. Bangoura reached out to the family of Solomon Hughes Sr. who helped end racial discrimination in the game of golf. Hughes passed away in 1987 and the clubhouse at Hiawatha is named after him.
"This is something that's very personal for me, and I understand very clearly the history of this golf course and what it means to the Black golfers, and for me as a person of color too," says Bangoura.
He also says the redesign will recognize the contributions of Hughes.
"He broke the barriers and he opened up the courses for for a lot of people like myself now that can look to that and look at that history and recognize the importance of it," says Bangoura.
For the Park Board, they're working on keeping tradition alive while making improvements to a course with deep roots in the community.
To that end, they're putting three concepts out to the public Thursday. Thursday evening, they'll host an Open House at the Lake Nokomis Community Center from 6:30-8:00 p.m. to see proposed designs and talk with the project team.
The new designs all change the course significantly with 18 holes becoming 9 holes, and includes a driving range, practice facilities, and improved community gathering spaces.
Bangoura says the series of design scenarios are all aimed at preventing persistent flooding problems with a more natural landscape in place, allowing for improved stormwater management.
The golf course was built when dredging began in 1929. Over 1.2 million cubic yards were dredged out of the previously swampy Rice Lake area creating Lake Hiawatha on the 28th Ave. side.
The course was created on the west shore of the lake using the dredged fill material. The clubhouse was built in 1932 and the course opened in 1934. There's been extensive remodeling to front nine holes in 1993 and the back nine holes in 1999.