Tag: California AB 672

Bill aimed at converting California municipal courses to housing is back — for a third time

Groups feel that the bill targets golf, because there is no mention of soccer, baseball stadiums or tennis facilities.

Perhaps the greatest example of how differently the two sides see the California Assembly bill now known as AB1910 is what the opposing sides call it.

Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) calls the bill she authored “Incentivize Conversion: Accessible Open Space & Affordable Housing.” Officials at various golf organizations in the state who oppose the bill refer to it as “The Public Golf Endangerment Act.”

The bill, which would allow municipally owned golf courses in the state to be transformed into affordable housing, is now in its third life. Garcia introduced the bill, known then as AB672, last year, but it never advanced out of its first committee. The bill was re-introduced in January and made it through two committees before stalling and dying in the assembly’s appropriations committee.

Garcia has now introduced the bill again with a new number but with the same basic intentions of the bills introduced last year and again in January. The legislation would allow the state to redevelop municipal golf courses into affordable housing. The earlier version of the bill focused on municipal courses in densely populated urban areas, but the current bill could allow development of any municipal course in the state. The fact that Garcia has now introduced the bill three times shows how dedicated she is to the idea.

More: California bill AB 672 to redevelop municipal golf courses stalls, but golf officials expect more challenges

“Studies show low-income communities and communities of color lack access to open space and lack housing security,” Garcia said in a tweet on her account as assemblymember for the 58th district. Garcia is also leaving the assembly to run for a newly drawn U.S. congressional district. “#AB1910 will chip away at these two injustices to help ensure that everyone is safely housed AND has open space to recreate.”

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Arguing for the future of the game

The powers in golf have pushed solid arguments about stopping the bill, including how a municipal golf course can be a center of recreational activity for a community, not just a place to hit a small bucket of balls or a place to play nine holes every once in a while. But the sport’s leading figures do point out two major issues with what Garcia has proposed, other than the feeling the bill circumvents the state’s Park Protection Act and that it could decrease the number of courses in the state.

First, groups like the Southern California Golf Association and the PGA of Southern California obviously feel that the bill targets golf, because there is no mention in the proposed legislation about converting soccer complexes or recreational baseball stadiums or tennis facilities. Only golf courses are specifically mentioned.

“The ONLY ‘accessible open space’ targeted is golf,” said Craig Kessler, director of public affairs for the Southern California Golf Association in an emailed letter to SCGA members about the re-introduction of the bill last week. “The Assembly Member’s Tweet on the subject makes that clear. A very large golf ball appears prominently; not open space or housing – a golf ball and little else, a popular name brand no less.”

Second is the idea that by going after municipal golf courses first, the door could be opened to propose development of other golf courses in the state in the future.

“Public parkland golf courses (municipal) are 22.3% of California’s golf stock; however, for reasons we have outlined in detail many times over the last year, the line from this bill is a straight one to the state’s daily fee and private club facilities,” Kessler said in his letter. “In both cases, it’s all about the land all the three species of course sit atop, and golf’s continuing legitimacy to employ that land as it has for more than a century.”

Even as the powers in golf in the state celebrate the bill’s two previous failures, they have to understand that this third attempt at passing the bill might not be the last. The SCGA, the SCPGA, the California Alliance for Golf and golfers themselves have to keep pressing the message that any golf course, but particularly municipal golf courses, are important to communities in general, not just to golfers.

The attacks will be coming, and so the defense must keep coming as well.

Larry Bohannan is the golf writer at the Palm Springs Desert Sun part of the USA Today Network. He can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4633. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan. 

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Revived California Assembly Bill threatens municipal golf, but in a watered-down form

The state bill proposes unspecified funding for repurposing publicly owned golf courses into housing developments.

A California Assembly bill that potentially could fund the repurposing of municipal golf courses into land for housing is moving forward again after dying in committee in 2021.

The gist of Assembly Bill 672 is that California faces huge homelessness problems and soaring housing costs, so municipal golf courses could be shut down and the land developed into housing, including at least 25 percent occupancy by low-income households.

Since being revived in early 2022, AB 672 has been significantly modified and passed two Assembly committees this week. It likely will reach an appropriations committee next week, and if approved there, it eventually would move to the full Assembly and then the California Senate for a vote.

The bill has caused outcry from many golfers and organizations, especially in the form in which it was written in 2021 that would have mandated that municipal golf courses be converted into housing.

In the bill’s current form, there is no such mandate. Instead, local governments and authorities would be allowed to make choices about closing municipal courses, and state funding would be made available to subsidize development into housing. Basically, it’s a much softer bill now than in its original form. And it faces huge obstacles in ever passing into law, not the least of which is that its current form does not specify any funds for development subsidies. In its original form, AB 672 provided $50 million for subsidies, but that funding line has been stricken from the current bill.

Craig Kessler, the director of public affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, on Thursday told Golfweek that the bill has gone from having a devastating impact in its 2021 form, to having significant impact, to now having much less impact if it were to pass. He also predicts many hurdles for the bill from supporters of public-access golf in the state.

“While I was never optimistic about this bill dying early in the 2022 process, I remain optimistic that it will not get signed into law in 2022,” Kessler said, “but only if the golf community continues to be as engaged in the next few months as it has in the past few months.”

There are more than 200 municipal courses in California, making up 22 percent of all courses in the state, including such highly ranked facilities as Torrey Pines, site of the 2021 U.S. Open in San Diego. AB 672 does not address privately owned public-access courses, such as most daily-fee courses, or privately owned country clubs.

The bill in its current form would:

  • Provide incentives in the form of grants to local agencies that enter into a development agreement to convert a publicly owned golf course into housing and publicly accessible open space.
  • Mandate that at least 25 percent of all new dwelling units would be occupied by lower-income households for a period of no less than 55 years.
  • Garcia describes the proposed law officially as the “Conversion of Publicly Owned Golf Courses to Affordable Housing” in the bill, but the bill does not specify or cap what type of housing might constitute the remaining 75 percent of dwelling units.
  • At least 15 percent of any such development must be open space, but golf courses would not be considered open space.
  • No more than a third of any such development could be used for non-residential purposes, including parking.
Rancho Park Golf Course
The municipal Rancho Park Golf Course used to host the PGA Tour’s Los Angeles Open. (Todd Kelly/Golfweek)

Larry Bohannan of the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported last April that the proposed law would remove municipal golf courses from protections of the Public Park Preservation Act, provide an exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and make it easier to rezone public open-space land for housing.

Proponents of the bill have said thousands of dwellings could be built on converted golf courses to ease housing problems. Garcia’s bill states that “Existing law establishes the Department of Housing and Community Development and requires it to, among other things, administer various programs intended to fund the acquisition of property to develop or preserve affordable housing.”

Supporters of golf – including the Southern California Golf Association and the California Alliance for Golf – have countered that golf courses serve as necessary green spaces in otherwise crowded cities, and that municipal golf courses typically serve lower-income players of diverse backgrounds, frequently with programs designed to introduce the game to such players.

“Removing golf and only golf from the 50-year-old protections of CEQA and the Public Park Preservation Act amounts to a determination by legislative fiat that golf is no longer part of the greater family of publicly accessible recreational activities,” James Ferrin, president of the California Alliance for Golf, a non-profit trade organization, said in a letter to the Housing and Community Development Committee and other assembly members in 2021, as reported by Bohannon. “The State of California should not be favoring or disfavoring specific recreational activities nor picking winners and losers among them.”

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