Studio City Golf Club Plan

I read with interest your Feb. 8 article about Los Angeles (possibly) buying the small golf course in Studio City. There wasn’t much mention of where the money would come from to buy this property. Probably not from the homeowners who have the interest.

The article said potential funding sources could include bonds that would be repaid by golf fees -- funds that were intended for upkeep and improvement of the already city-owned courses. I don’t hear the golfers of Los Angeles clamoring to have the city buy this course. Greens fees were raised recently, with the intended use being for maintenance and improvement. Are they going to raise fees again so they can buy this course?

The city operates what I consider a fine system of golf courses. I don’t believe that money should be siphoned from this system, which needs the funds for upkeep and improvement, to satisfy the homeowners of a very small but affluent portion of the city.

Larry Feige

Van Nuys

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As a senior who has lived in the Studio City area for more than 50 years and who has enjoyed our beautiful Studio City Golf and Tennis Club countless times, I am protesting the statements from Stephen Taylor, chief executive of the development company determined to destroy the club for the sake of nothing more than money in his investors’ pockets.

The golf course is the jewel of our town and our last open green space. We do not need his cement monstrosity, and we are not drastically in need of senior housing. In fact, a new large facility is opening this fall, blocks from his proposed senior warehouse. It is my guess that his new facility will be upscale, in keeping with the neighborhood, and that all the pitiful homeless seniors he attempts to depict will not be able to afford the “home on a golf course” he has shown in his preliminary brochures. I know I can’t.

His statement about “closing down trauma centers” in the city is totally unrelated to his greedy determination to grab our park. We seniors know only too well that “senior facilities” are built to line the pockets of investors and no trauma patients will ever come to this one’s doors. “Saving 76% of the land” while the rest is a stucco monster, plus parking, sounds as ridiculous as the result would be -- a death knell for our recreational green space.

More than a “handful of homeowner leaders” are against Taylor’s plan. Indeed, there are hundreds of us, and more joining every day. It says a lot that our elected leaders are behind us -- all but one, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

Karen Thorsen Cotter

Valley Village

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While it is encouraging that the L.A. City Council has identified the preservation of the Studio City Golf and Tennis Club as an end worthy of public largess, it is discouraging that the debate surrounding this acquisition has not focused more attention upon the envisaged financing mechanism. The devil is always in that particular detail.

If the acquisition is structured in such a way that the gross revenue generated by the Studio City complex is dedicated to retiring the long-term indebtedness created by the purchase, both the residents of Studio City and the golfers of L.A. will benefit. However, if the acquisition is structured in such a way that the complex drains disproportionate resources from the city’s other 14 golf properties, everyone will suffer. The city’s golfers, who number in the hundreds of thousands and are dispersed throughout the city’s 15 council districts, will have little choice but to oppose the purchase.

Craig Kessler

Exec. Dir., Public Links

Golf Assn. of Southern

California, Buena Park