Letters: County missed opportunity to save Belmont Golf Course

Dear Editor,

The significance of historical sites is celebrated and preserved across this great nation and nowhere more than in Central Virginia. The Commonwealth is rightfully proud of its history and while not all sites are universally respected, we prevent them from being destroyed and defiled.

Some, however, are allowed to suffer from years of neglect and mismanagement. While perhaps not as significant as a battlefield or the historical homes of Jackson Ward or Monument Avenue, we have such a site right in the center of Henrico County.
Belmont Golf Course is approaching its 104th birthday and is in danger of being bulldozed to modernize it! Sadly this “modernization” will be carried out by groups and individuals that have long been respected in the golfing community.

The Greater Richmond Chapter of First Tee and The Davis Love Group are formulating plans that would destroy the work of one of the greatest golf course architects the USA has known. When presented with this barren piece of farmland, A.W. Tillinghast commented that while it had tight confines, it was the best piece of land for a golf course he had seen south of the Mason-Dixon line. He proceeded to design and build a masterpiece of a golf course that to this day is the only course in the Commonwealth to host a major championship when Virginia’s own Sam Snead took the PGA Championship in 1949.

Despite this storied history, we are about to lose this historic site.

I believe everyone agrees that sport builds character in our children and an individual sport like golf encourages the discipline and respect so important in their development, but why is it necessary to destroy a golf course so loved by the community that they continue to support it even though it is a shadow of its former glorious self? First Tee could add to their existing facilities in Richmond City and Chesterfield County on any piece of land in Henrico County or a small portion of any existing park or sports complex.

The County organized three community input meetings this year to create a Master Plan for Belmont. They were shocked by the vast turnout of local residents and golf enthusiasts from across the region who implored them to save what they termed hallowed ground. At all three meetings they were almost begged to lease the golf course to a management company that would renovate all eighteen holes and repair the course following years of under-investment and neglect.

The Board of Supervisors and the County Manager who, to their credit, attended all three meetings stated that this was “democracy at work” and that the “will of the people” had been heard.

Despite multiple management companies responding to Henrico County’s request for proposals to lease the golf course and preserve it for future generations, the County chose to allow First Tee to destroy it.

Hardly “the will of the people” and certainly not “democracy at work.”

Sincerely,
Mary Ellen Grainger