Ventura Council Urges Plan of Action for Building Golf Courses

More than a dozen local golfers helped persuade the City Council to move ahead with devising a plan of action for the city’s golf courses before summer.

The decision Monday night followed a routine renewal of a contract Zeke Avila & Sons Inc. has to operate the Olivas Park Golf Course on Olivas Park Drive for an additional 10 years.

But the golf enthusiasts beseeched council members, several of whom are avid golfers, to build a new nine-hole course--as Avila had suggested in an unsolicited proposal to the city last fall.

At the suggestion of Councilman Ray Di Guilio, the council voted to have city staff prepare a plan of action for creating a golf course master plan within 45 days.

“I think we ought to springboard off this to ask what the community wants,” Di Guilio said before making his recommendation.

The current golf course lease agreement with Avila expires Sept. 30. Avila operates all aspects of the 18-hole Olivas Park course, except the food concessions, and provides carts and operates the pro shop at the nearby Buenaventura Golf Course. The new lease will run through 2007.

But last fall, Avila submitted an unsolicited proposal to expand the scope of the company’s contract with the city. The company offered to take over maintenance of the 18-hole Buenaventura course, and suggested that the city allow it to develop a new nine-hole course on 55 acres of city-owned land between the Olivas Park course and Harbor Boulevard.

Professional golf consultant Doug Main, who showed up at the city’s request, told the council about changes that have occurred in the golf industry in the past 10 years. He suggested that management of any new course be open to a competitive bidding process.

But the idea of creating more public links unleashed a torrent of demands from golfers who said they need more public space on which to play.

“I encourage you to develop a nine-hole golf course,” said John Correa, a member of the city’s Community Affairs Commission. “I don’t care how . . . but it is important that you do it.”

Correa noted that an earlier city report said that development of the 55 acres into a golf course could generate $400,000 in annual income, and that the county was lacking seven public courses.

Women golfers, senior golfers, single golfers and coaches of junior golfers showed up to support a new public course.

“I respectfully ask that you consider the proposal by Avila to build another golf course,” said Lori Jacobson, who heads the Ventura County Junior Golf Assn. “We need more golf courses.”

She said her organization’s membership has grown from 20 in 1995 to more than 200 today.

In 1992, the city commissioned a golf study conducted by Los Angeles-based Economic Research Associates, which examined local public courses and concluded that an overall master plan should be developed that includes necessary capital improvements, a building schedule and funding plan. But a master plan has yet to be developed.