RECOMMENDATIONS FROM
THE NORTH GOLF COURSE
COMMUNITY ADVISORY BOARD
Dr. Sara Koplik, Chair
President Koch, President Schmidly, members of the Board of Regents: Good morning. My name is Dr. Sara Koplik, and I am the chair of President Schmidly’s North UNM Golf Course Community Advisory Board. I am here today with some members of our board. We have Mardon Gardella, Garret Price, Norty Kalishman, Matt Barnes, and Cara McCulloch. We also have City Councilor Rey Garduno, and Representatives Gail Chasey and Danice Picraux who also provided input.
For the benefit of those assembled with us today, I will take a short time to summarize our report, and address some of the most salient questions submitted by President Schmidly. If you turn to the final page of the recommendations, you will see a map with zones of various colors. This is the first slide in our Power-Point presentation.
As you can see, there is a red zone, a green zone and a green zone with hash marks. The red zone shows the nine holes of golf in their current configuration, as designed by world-renowned golf course architect, William Tucker. By maintaining the original design, the university may be able to obtain funds from certain organizations for the preservation of this historic landmark. Additionally, the preservation of a regulation nine-hole golf course is the only viable way to help generate further revenues through greens fees. In discussions with a large cross-section of the public, we learned that people are most concerned about maintaining a golf course, green space and the mature trees. The community would view preservation of the nine holes of golf with considerable gratitude and affection towards UNM.
The next area is the green zone. This land is available to the university for development within an academic context. The northern part of the green zone is owned by AMAFCA. However, if the university shows willingness to enter into an accord to preserve urban green space, it is our belief that AMAFCA may be amenable to facilitating this land-use compromise. A compromise could only occur after rehabilitation of the diversion channel – a project that isn’t currently in the planning stages, but will occur. The Board will work hard to help facilitate this relationship with AMAFCA.
Furthermore, the advisory board recommends that the North Golf Course become a place for learning about the environment, conservation, sustainability and habitat restoration. This fits in perfectly with the university’s goals of providing leadership for a sustainable future. The barren fairways would be an ideal location to establish an open classroom benefiting the students of the university.
The green hash area is currently occupied by the club house. Potentially, it could be moved to the north end of the barren fairways, next to the Mind Institute. This would provide the university with four more acres of prime real estate along Tucker. Again, all of our recommendations are based on reaching consensus, and serving the needs of the university and the community. The University of New Mexico is an urban campus, nestled in the heart of our city. As a life-long resident of this community, I can attest to the campus becoming appreciably hotter as more and more infill projects have occurred. Indeed, as we grow, the value of open space is magnified.
At this point, I would like to turn the Regents’ attention to the Power-Point presentation. As the temperature on our planet has increased, we have begun to experience deleterious effects. We don’t know what occurred in Albuquerque, however precise data is available for Atlanta. The DOE tracked its temperature over a 20 year period. (slide 2) Let’s start in 1972 (slide 3), 1978 (slide 4), 1986 (slide 5), 1993 (slide 6), imagine what it looks like today, 15 years after the study ended (slide 7)? Probably most of the land is now colored red.
We wonder if Albuquerque experienced a similar shift. We don’t have a similar map for the Duke City, but we were able to find this document which shows the number of cars which travel along the Big-I every day. (slide 8) It’s extraordinary, really. As you can see, 186,000 vehicles travel south towards the university every day on I-25. Even on the surface roads, 30,000 cars use Lomas and 35,000 cars use Central daily.
This is yet another reason why we believe that green space is so valuable for the university, the city, and indeed for our planet. It protects all of us from the egregious aspects of development. UNM has stated that it wishes to be a leader in sustainability. We firmly believe that the golf course can play a significant role in such efforts, as a green space, and as an area to help lessen the urban heat island effect.
The goal of the advisory board was to bring consensus and shared prosperity to all parties. Our recommendations were agreed upon unanimously, and the student voice is strongly felt in this document. Please remember that half of the advisory board members were chosen by me and half by President Schmidly. There is an enormous diversity of experience and opinion in this group. We have a developer and an environmentalist, two neighborhood leaders and a former college president, a student, a golfer, a doctor and an architect. Seven of the ten members graduated (or are about to graduate) from the University of New Mexico.
Our intent has never been adversarial, rather we seek to create a lasting positive solution to a decades-long conflict. The advisory board has been focused on determining a way to maximize the public benefit of the golf course lands, for students and faculty and residents of the City of Albuquerque. We are all interconnected.
We are convinced that the vision, intelligence and capability exist at UNM to preserve open space while concurrently allowing the university to thrive. After speaking with elected officials and technical experts, we believe that there are mechanisms to fully compensate UNM for permanent preservation of open space. As a board, we did not spend a great deal of time examining this issue, as this overture must come from the university administration. However, just two days ago, Peter Ives, Regional Counsel at the Trust for Public Lands spoke at the Law School about conservation easements. It appears that the North Golf Course would certainly fit into such parameters. The Trust for Public Lands would be willing to assist in such an endeavor, if you see fit.
If the Regents choose to permanently protect the golf course during their tenure, UNM’s relationship with Albuquerque residents would be transformed. Such foresight would bring forth a deep well of generosity from the surrounding community. It is difficult to underestimate the love that thousands feel for the golf course. We hope that you will note that value does not just come from bricks and mortar and the bottom line. It also comes from community good will, quality of life, a more natural environment with hundreds of trees, and the space to think and breathe and be at peace.
The North UNM Golf Course Community Advisory Board strongly encourages you to think of the value of open land, of green space in the middle of a dense, urban area. As development continues, this land’s values will only increase, along with the ever-growing need for a place of natural respite.
We now stand for questions.
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