The Waiting Game

With no room left to maneuver, golfers and environmentalists attempt to resolve their tug-of-war over the few parcels of undeveloped land in the San Francisco Bay Area.

By Bruce Schoenfeld

Bradford benz gazes out his office window at a swell of largely undeveloped land on the fringe of San Jose, Calif., and envisions the golf course he designed for it more than seven years ago. He talks about the course as if it were actually there, across a parking lot and a busy street from his handsome second-floor suite. His voice grows wistful. "It's such a wonderful site," he says. "The scene you experience as you play is so dramatic because it changes with every hole." He calls it one of the finest courses in California, perhaps the West. "Just looking at it makes you dream," he says.

But for seven years now, the course Benz has named Boulder Ridge has existed only in blueprints, models and the three-dimensional technicolor of his imagination. Although financing is in place and environmental restrictions have been met, the project has repeatedly been stalled by lawsuits and other delay tactics. His money already spent, developer Rocky Garcia has been forced to wait -- and so have the golfers of Santa Clara County, who, by any objective measure, desperately need another public course. Many developers, unable to stay solvent through the delays, would have folded up long ago.

And that's precisely what the opponents of Boulder Ridge would have wanted. For seven years, some of America's strongest environmental groups have waged a shrewd battle of attrition as Garcia's investment sat idle. "There's a myriad of things you can attack in the approval process," says Brent N. Ventura, a Los Gatos, Calif., attorney who serves on the seven-member Santa Clara County Planning Commission. "You generally attack them all and hope something sticks."

Despite two pending lawsuits, the project is looking more promising now than at any time in years. However, even the most optimistic timetable won't put golfers on the course until 1999, and 2000 or 2001 seems more likely. The approval process, which already has lasted longer than all of World War II, has been an awakening for the veteran designer, who has had courses built in 20 countries and a dozen states. One of them, for the city of Reno, Nev., was planned for federally protected land and underwent a review process of more than two dozen government agencies over three years. "But that was nothing compared to this," he says.

In fact, a decade-long wait to construct a golf course on the peninsula between San Jose and San Francisco isn't even uncommon. Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties have been looking to build new public courses for decades; San Mateo, with two public courses to service 800,000 residents, may have the lowest such ratio in the country. "There were two public courses in San Mateo County when I grew up," says Bob Murphy, 61, a broadcaster and marketer who has founded the Northern California Golf Council. "And there are the same two there now."

Not even the San Francisco-based Sierra Club disputes the need for public courses throughout the peninsula. But usable private land is scarce, and what's left is far too expensive for municipalities and other potential developers to consider. In San Mateo County, especially, they've looked to public land -- and run up against environmental lobbies that won't sanction recontouring protected open space for golf. "A golf course is a very artificial environment in California," says Ventura, who has heard the arguments from both sides. "It's not a natural preserve. Grass doesn't grow naturally in California, so most golf courses use as much water in a year as 500 homes."

That's the battle that has been waging here since the 1960s -- and, by and large, the environmentalists have won it. "What you're really seeing is a culture clash," says Paul Koenig, the Director of Environmental Services for San Mateo County. "The golfers don't see how they can be denied the opportunity to build the golf course they've been wanting for 25 years because of some little butterfly that looks like every other butterfly. The environmentalists can't believe anyone would harm a protected species just to bang a ball around with a stick."

It may seem a singular situation, but this stretch of Northern California is merely ahead of its time. Many municipalities across the country will run out of usable land in the coming decades, even as the population of golfers continues to grow. "And nobody's going to rip out an industrial park to put in a public golf course," says Ventura.

* * *

Barbara Koontz only started playing golf a few years ago. Now, as the president of the San Mateo County Golfers Association, a group formed to help compete politically against the highly organized environmental organizations, she painstakingly unpacks charts, displays and stacks of documents at a table inside the San Mateo County Golf Course snack bar. She wants to illustrate for a visitor the long, tortuous history of the county's attempts to build a new public course.

"My background is environmental," says Koontz, an energetic woman in her 60s and the daughter of a botanist who worked at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. "We camp, we hike, we recycle. That shouldn't surprise anyone. I mean, we're not talking about putting in a nuclear plant, we're talking about a golf course." She produces a Rand McNally map, copyrighted 1972, that delineates an area as the Edgewood Golf Course. She marks the spot with a fingertip. "That course never happened," she says. "And no other course has been built yet, either."

In 1969, as part of a mitigation agreement that allowed Interstate 280 to be built on the western half of the peninsula, the U.S. government set aside protected land in the San Francisco watershed. A small part of a 4,000-acre parcel officially called the Southern San Mateo Peninsula Lands was earmarked for recreational use that would include at least one golf course, though the ambiguous language of the easement described its construction as permissible, not mandatory. After plans were announced to build such a course, developers were asked by environmentalists to move their site from the 4,000-acre parcel to the other side of the highway, into the area that is now Edgewood Park.

"They didn't want us to touch the 4,000 acres, even though it specifically states in the easement that we can," says Koontz, who has immersed herself in the history of the conflict. Instead, the county purchased the 467 acres of Edgewood land and commissioned the design of an 18-hole course over hilly terrain -- a design that featured native grass, picnic areas, horse trails and a preserved area of ecologically valuable serpentine soil.

That's when the checkerspot butterfly was found. And a species of blind spider visible only with a microscope. And the San Francisco garter snake. And a red-legged frog. It turned out, too, that the Edgewood land drained in seven directions, so that ensuring the safety of the water that flowed off the course and into the watershed would have been costly, if not impossible. Soon, the Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society and the Committee for Green Foothills had sued to stop construction. In the end, a compromise was reached: San Mateo County would leave the Edgewood land untouched as a park and preserve, and the proposed golf course would be moved back to the 4,000 acres of mitigated land.

With optimism high, several different courses were designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. and others. When environmentalists objected to the use of a small triangle of land on the opposite side of a road from the 4,000 acres because that might disrupt the flight pattern of the Monarch butterfly, two additional options not utilizing that land were proposed. But as the early '80s advanced into the '90s, the environmental groups -- led by the Sierra Club, which had brokered the original compromise -- continued to object to those, too.

"We did suggest that land as an alternate site," admits the current director of the Sierra Club's Loma Prieta Chapter, Julia Bott, who has seen a copy of former chapter secretary Mary Marsden's 1983 letter to that effect. "But just because we made a bad decision doesn't mean we have to go through with it."

Bott insists that such intransigence shouldn't be interpreted as the Sierra Club's wholesale opposition to the construction of golf courses. "Many of our members golf, and they support golf courses," she says. "They just don't support inappropriate developments in sensitive locations." The problem, she admits, is that there isn't any land left in San Mateo County. She shrugs. "I mean, there's no space for a ballpark for the San Francisco Giants, either," she says. "They're just going to have to accept that. Nobody's making any more land."

According to Paul Koenig, San Mateo County examined every possible parcel of land, whether economically viable or not. "I cannot think of any stone we've left unturned," he says. In the end, Koenig's office identified 22 possible sites -- and the Sierra Club opposed every one of them, for one reason or another. That sent the county back to the 4,000 acres of the Southern watershed, and a parsing of the original easement language as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The easement site itself is nondescript -- open space, hard by the roadside, backed by a hill of scrub oak, pine and cypress trees -- but a patch of more politically problematic ground would be hard to find. The entanglement dates all the way back to the controversial Hetch Hetchy dam project of the 1930s, which was deemed necessary for continued growth in the San Francisco area. The water diverted by the Hetch Hetchy dam allows San Francisco to support its burgeoning population, and it has created the watershed that now abuts I-280.

As part of the terms of Hetch Hetchy, that watershed land is actually owned by the city of San Francisco, which sits some 30 miles to the north. Because of the protected status granted when the freeway was built, it is operated under the de facto control of the Golden Gate Recreation Area, which is a branch of the National Park Service. Like Bott, Golden Gate's general superintendent, Brian O'Neill, takes pains to explain that he and his organization are not anti-golf. He points out that San Francisco's storied Presidio Golf Course, which until 1993 was a private club on a commissioned Army base, is now under his jurisdiction. To O'Neill, it serves as a model for those who would renovate aging courses on difficult parcels of land.

There's no question that the area needs more courses like the Presidio, O'Neill says. He'd love to see them built -- but not in his backyard. "The only area where we've taken a position is on the watershed site," he says. "We felt it was inappropriate, given its national park designation, to be proposing a recontouring of 200 acres." Besides, says O'Neill, for lands in the public domain, there are more important uses than golf courses.

O'Neill can't dictate what can be done with the land, but he can express official approval or disapproval of any proposed project. With both the National Park Service and the Sierra Club lined up against golf in the watershed, San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission, which does have power, has steadfastly refused to listen to the entreaties of the would-be golfers -- even those, like Koontz, who arrive at meetings with sheafs of correspondence that claim a legal right to build a course somewhere in those 4,000 acres. Even if the easement does permit a golf course to be constructed there, the Commission responds, it doesn't state it has to be. "It can be done there, sure," says Bott. "But so can a lot of other things."

Furthermore, Bott's argument continues, as a society we've learned plenty about conservation since 1969. What made sense then might not make sense now. "Personally," she says, "I don't think they can find 150 acres for a golf course that wouldn't upset either the wetlands or endangered species areas. And it's not just a golf course. It's much larger-scale, higher-density development we're talking about here. I mean, it's parking, it's a clubhouse, it's banquet facilities, it's weddings on a Sunday afternoon. . . ."

Her voice trails off as she envisions traffic jams spewing exhaust into the air, and revelers cavorting over protected wetland. It's about at that point, anyway, that the argument begins to drift into the shady area of property law interpretation, which means political power becomes paramount. And there's little question that, despite the efforts of Koontz and others to organize the golfers, it is the environmentalists who wield the clout.

"They're the thought-control police," says Quentin Kopp, one of the few area politicians who has supported the building of a new public course in San Mateo County. A large man with dark-rimmed glasses and an intense manner, Kopp is an iconoclastic state senator from San Francisco who doesn't even belong to a political party. "I was brought up in Syracuse, N.Y.," he says. "We had more public golf courses in Syracuse, where you can only play six months out of the year, than in the whole Bay Area." Pacing the floor of his small office in a commercial area of South San Francisco, he calls for his voluminous files on the matter, then pores over the fine print looking for the precise language of the easement.

"It's an uphill fight," he says, looking up from the pages. "The Sierra Club is the most extreme group in America. And they're a very well-connected, very powerful lobby. I'd say it's at least 60-40 against."

Those odds may be about to diminish considerably. San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is currently constructing a master plan for the watershed area that may specifically preclude golf. That would supersede the language of the easement and provide a lasting legal barrier to the construction of a course. "Right now, before anything is passed, is the window of opportunity," says Kopp, who adds that he is planning to contact San Francisco's new mayor, Willie Brown, to see if pressure can be put on the Commission. "If Willie supports it, boom!" Kopp says. "It happens."

The longtime speaker of the California House of Representatives, Brown has made a career out of nimbly surfing the political waves. As of July, neither Kopp nor anyone else had found any reason to believe Brown might cross the powerful environmentalists in favor of the golf lobby. With another summer of crowded courses and long waits for starting times passing, no remedy is in sight. Kopp has often stated he would support any effort to take the environmental groups or the PUC to court over the easement rights, but sees absolutely no hope of success once an unfavorable master plan is released.

"If that happens," he says, "they'll lose."

* * *

Those new to the anti-golf course movement are usually startled to learn that there already is a course built directly into the San Francisco watershed. Called Crystal Springs, it overlooks the actual water supply source for the entire region. It has operated continuously and without incident since 1926.

"If PUC's concern is water supply," says Koontz, "we have documented evidence there will be no problem. If there ever was going to be a problem, that's where it would have been."

Tom Isaac, a former Democratic state politician (and, coincidentally, a Sierra Club member), took operational control of the course in April. He's proud of it, not merely as a place to play but as an environmental experience. He likes to show it off to visitors: how the deer graze between the first and ninth fairways, how a buck wanders past the fourth tee. The view from the sixth hole is a sweeping vista of 30,000 acres of undeveloped land, including a chain of sparkling reservoirs that serves as a holding area for millions of gallons of drinkable water.

Since taking control of Crystal Springs, Isaac has cut water usage substantially to reduce runoff -- and, not incidentally, helped change golfers' perception of a well-maintained fairway as a bright green one. He's planning to post pictures and descriptions of the flora and fauna most often seen on the course, such as the red-tailed hawk and the bobcat. "Why not use a golf course to raise people's consciousness and knowledge about natural things we're seeing less and less of in urban areas?" he asks. He makes the case that courses are the closest thing to a walk in the wild most modern urbanites ever experience.

"Golf exposes more average people to what's awfully nice about the outdoors than just about anything else," he says. "The Sierra Club ought to be grateful for that."

That symbiosis between the game and nature just might be the common ground that ultimately provides a solution. Patrick Sanchez, the director of San Mateo County's Parks and Recreation Division, has recently returned from a visit to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and elsewhere to see how other environmentally sensitive areas are overcoming ecological restrictions. He has done research on the topic and notes that on Lake Tahoe's Squaw Creek course, for example, there are more birds and wildlife than ever before. "Grasses are growing, streams are cleaner," he says. "There's no question the golf course there has been a benefit to the land."

Sanchez proposes including such elements in future design plans. "There can be hiking and jogging trails, cycling, and all kinds of other recreational amenities in and around a golf course," he says. "We've learned this much: if a golf course is to occur here, the golfer has to realize he or she won't be the sole recreational user of the facility."

A half-hour to the south, in Santa Clara County, similar ideas are under discussion. After months of debate, Benz, Ventura and a group of environmentalists including Bott have agreed on guidelines for golf course construction in the county. Called the Santa Clara County Environmental/Design Guidelines For Golf Course Development, it's a set of non-binding recommendations that give potential developers a blueprint for the type of course that is likely to get approval from the county supervisors.

"If you set your standards high enough, you can put in a golf course that would have many of the features of a wildlife preserve," says Ventura. "Let's set aside some of the land for permanent open space for habitat and wildlife, and wrap the golf course around it."

Benz has been saying much the same thing at public hearings for years. He believes that a golf course in the midst of an ecologically fragile area not only prevents more damaging development, but protects the land with ongoing, high-maintenance care. The construction of Boulder Ridge, he argues, would mandate protection of sensitive natural areas such as the rock formations that give the course its name. "Left alone, the boulders are subject to kids going up there and spray-painting graffiti all over them, which is exactly what they've done," he says.

In effect, Benz has overcome some environmental opposition by aligning himself with the environmentalists. He has gone so far as to sit on their side of the table at hearings, a tactic that helped defuse much of the initial animosity. "I tried to show them we wanted to do something better for the environment, with golf as a side benefit," he says. "That's good design practice. It's what responsible course architects and maintenance people should be doing, even without guidelines."

There's evidence the same kind of thinking is showing up at courses everywhere. "It's the topic of conversation whenever we have meetings," says John Carlone, the superintendent of the course at Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside, N.Y., which is contiguous to federally protected land. "I don't say, 'Hey, I put up an osprey nest,' but I will share information like, 'I'm using a new kind of grass that needs pesticide less often.' I think nothing of picking up the phone and asking someone at another course for environmental advice. We're in this together."

As word spreads that golf courses need not be environmental liabilities, public opposition to building them on protected public land -- some of the last, best recreational space remaining in America -- may diminish. Even Bott was recently heard to say that most homeowners use pesticides far more injudiciously on their lawns than most course superintendents ever would.

Benz says she learned that from him at a public hearing, which is a sign that the seven years he spent pleading his case weren't necessarily wasted. And while that's small solace to the long-suffering golfers of Santa Clara County, as far as establishing a lasting dialogue, it's at least a start.