The days of walking down the hallowed fairways of John Blumberg Golf Course may be numbered, despite the support of hundreds of Winnipeg and Headingley golfers and residents who would like to see the green space spared.
“I think if they sell this, there’s going to be a lot of people not golfing,” said Tracy Huston, manager of John Blumberg.
“There’ll be all these fathers and grandparents now that are bringing these young little tykes and I don’t think they’ll go to Tuxedo or Bel Acres. They’ve been brought up here, they want to stay here.”
The golf course and its 200 acres of land have been on the City of Winnipeg’s surplus lists for years. Over the past year, the city has been accepting requests for proposals for the land, a process which has now concluded.
“Following evaluations of all submitted proposals, the city will be making a recommendation to the standing policy committee on property and development, heritage, and downtown development in the coming months,” a city spokesman said in a statement.
The city would not provide details of the submitted proposals, however John Blumberg’s current lessor, Brian Campbell, feels he made the city a generous offer.
“My RFP for the city was, I’ll build eight pickle ball courts, I’ll build a big miniature golf course, I’ll pay the city a minimum of $50,000 a year for the next 10 years and based on that, in 10 years they get the course back with all those amenities added to it,” Campbell said.
“I think if they sell this, there’s going to be a lot of people not golfing.”
Campbell signed on to a six-year lease in 2017 and says the course had hit rock bottom at the time, averaging only 7,000 rounds of golf played over the past few years. He said he had a vested interest in bringing the course back to its glory days, such as in 2003 when John Blumberg logged 87,000 rounds of golf.
“When I moved to Winnipeg in ’83, I came to this golf course and I couldn’t believe it was a public golf course,” Campbell said.
“After about ’97 it started getting worse every year, and then I had an opportunity to help it out in 2017. I just want to restore it back to the way it was and try to save the golf course.”
Campbell said that he invested $300,000 of his own money in the first three years of his lease to fix greens and fairways and correct irrigation problems. According to Campbell, the city initially matched the dollar amount.
Since Campbell took over, John Blumberg has seen a 428 per cent increase in rounds played, up to 25,000 rounds in 2020 and the course is on pace for 30,000 rounds in 2021. Huston, who has served as manager for four years, said she has seen a definite increase in an appetite for golf during the pandemic.
“We notice a lot of young children, we have fathers coming out now with their three-year-olds, female and male, teaching them how to play golf,” Huston said.
Jared Ladobruk, executive director of Golf Manitoba, said he does not want to see John Blumberg repurposed or shut down based on how the base of golfers in Manitoba has grown tremendously over the past two seasons.
“We want to see our facilities remain open,” Ladobruk said.
“Golf, as we’ve seen in the last two years, has been an opportunity to get active and have fun with friends and family in a time where we’ve needed it the most.”
“The thing that boggles both of us is that right now the city wants to purchase 1,000 acres to have green space and this is 200 acres that they want to sell, it doesn’t make sense,” Huston said.
