Trash authority gives up on landfill golf course - Columbus Dispatch

The Phoenix Golf Links will not rise again.

The agency that runs the Franklin County landfill has decided to permanently shutter the golf course in Jackson Township south of Columbus.

The course became the property of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio a little more than a year ago in a settlement with its former owners. Built atop a closed county landfill that SWACO inherited in 1989, the course was designed to protect the earthen cap over the landfill while creating a public amenity and raising money for the agency.

Only it never really worked out that way.

Years after it opened, it was discovered that methane gas was leaking from a gas-collection system under the course. Both SWACO and the company running the golf course said the other was responsible for fixing the problem, which landed the matter in court.

The sides settled in January of 2014. The former golf course managers received a little more than $2.3 million to buy out their 30-year lease, and SWACO received control of the property and course.

Authority leaders, realizing they had no business trying to operate a golf course, tried twice, unsuccessfully, to find a management company to run it.

“While many companies expressed interest in operating the course, the financial terms to do so were not acceptable to SWACO,” Ty Marsh, the agency’s executive director, wrote in an email to board members earlier this week. “As a result, the course will close permanently.”

He wrote that the course suffered from the same decline in golfers and rounds played that is hurting courses across the country. Two other Franklin County courses have closed this year, too, he said.

On the plus side for SWACO, it now should be cheaper for the agency to fix problems with the methane-gas-collection system under the course because it no longer has to work around the golf course’s schedule.

Carol Ann Phillips, SWACO’s chief financial officer, has said that agency will have to spend about $290,000 a year on routine upkeep and maintenance to the system to meet safety and environmental standards.

She had earlier predicted that repairs to the system would run about $1.8 million on top of that.

Marsh said this week that SWACO will eventually fill in the sand bunkers, take out the cart paths and level the slopes to provide for easier maintenance and mowing of the property and to better protect the landfill cap.

“Other potential uses for the land will be explored at a later date,” he said.