County denies ‘New Direction’ for county’s historic municipal golf course

On Tuesday morning, March 3, the Warren County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to decline to enter into a management contract to cap its annual financial liability for its municipal golf course and initiate a potential three-year plan to turn the fortunes of the golf club around.

Despite the unanimity of the vote, discussion indicated a variety of reasons for the rejection of the management plan favored by an apparent majority of the Front Royal Golf Club’s members, as well as that of the County’s Golf Advisory Committee.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors has chosen no ‘New Direction’ for its historic, 82-year-old municipal, public golf course. Photos and video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

Likely the board’s top supporter of the County’s ownership of the course gifted to the citizens of Warren County by the William Carson family in 1938, Tony Carter pointed to some ongoing legal questions about the course’s fate and potential re-deeding of the historic and riverfront property to Carson family heirs to explain his decision to support Delores Oates motion to deny the $100,000 per year, three-year management contract.

However, prefacing that observation Carter said he looked at the management contract as “the last shot” to turn the nine-hole course into a successful financial proposition for the county and its citizens. So, his vote did not indicate that the legal questions cleared up, he would not support the contract at a future time.

However, in explaining her opposition to the contract, Oates cited her perception that the government’s role is to provide “essential services” to its citizens. And apparently recreation, particularly golf in a county with four private golf courses, is not what she sees as an essential service to county citizens short a private club membership fee and fees.

Golf Advisory Committee member Chris Lang was passionate in urging creative investment in the Carson family’s recreational legacy to a lost son, and county citizens.

However, in stating his support of the contract, Golf Advisory Board member Chris Lang noted the Front Royal Golf Club was here first, and that owners of other private county courses had chosen to come here to compete with the community course initially run by a private, non-profit management group. In financial difficulty, that group sold the course to the County a number of years ago for money spent to prop it up and coverage of any debt.

Of the county’s first, and most historic golf property, Lang wrote the county board, “Some of the people in this county are right – she costs us some money at this time. But where is the payback for serving us for 82 years? And remember, closing this course is saying that Mr. Carson’s legacy means nothing, and I believe that is wrong.”

A historical figure here in his own right, William Carson and his family donated the land to the county’s citizens for recreation use, “including golf”, in memory of their late son Willie who died prematurely while a student at R-MA in Front Royal.

Historic, old, and perhaps now abandoned by the county to which it was gifted in memory of a lost son, 82 years ago. File photo.

“The County tried some ideas and with good intent, but they drove away a lot of members by closing for the winter for three years; having no food and beverage plan, no leagues or tournaments, and no advertising budget,” Lang wrote the supervisors and restated Tuesday, adding of a course he is obviously fond of, “She needs our help and someone has sent a new guardian in (New Directions Golf Management principal) Mike Byrd. He is the only one who has stepped up to this incredible challenge. This is not an easy path he has chosen. None of the current owners of other courses have stepped up to adopt her, and she is the reason all of them are here. And only one golf course has opposed this idea – Bowling Green Country Club,” Lang noted.

In fact, Bowling Green Country Club co-owner Ginger Morrison, was the primary speaker against the contract Tuesday.

Of the Morrison family’s development of Bowling Green, Lang observed that Ginger’s father Lynwood Morrison, build the second golf course in the county 28 years after the public Front Royal clubland was gifted to county citizens and opened.

In stating her opposition, Ginger Morrison called the public course undue municipal competition with private sector business. She suggested the County spend its money on other things, like road improvements.

Co-owner with her brother of the Bowling Green Country Club, built by her father 28 years after the Front Royal Golf Club was gifted to the community, Ginger Morrison urged the County not to fund competition with her and other private country club golf courses.

See the public comments debate on the golf club management contract, and the board’s discussion, as well as other business in this Royal Examiner video.

Other actions or lack of action by the board Tuesday will be added in forthcoming Royal Examiner stories.