The City of Jacksonville Parks & Lakes Committee has approved a proposal for a disc golf course near the Links.
The committee met Tuesday night and hashed out details between Sean Meek, who brought the proposal to the full City Council two weeks ago, and Links Golf Course manager Keith Ward.
Ward and Meek both said they had met since the original proposal to hash out concerns and differences on the layout of the park and any potential conflicts between the ball golf course and the disc course.
Ward says they had a good meeting and have worked things out so both can coexist: “I wanted to tell Sean that I had some ideas to help promote jr. high, high school, and college golf. I wanted to make sure they weren’t going to be a problem with the disc golf out there in the practice location I have in mind. Like I said, I met with Sean and we had a good conversation and agreement. He showed me his layout and I showed him the practice area that I’m wanting to have for the kids to bring them up to another level in their game. It’s all going to work out just fine.”
Ward says that he and Meek will coordinate to plan schedules around tournaments and events so they don’t conflict with each other. Course fees, cart rentals, and other particulars are still being worked over until the idea can be brought back before the City Council for a vote.
Meek says he is still making small changes to the original layout he presented to the city council. He says there will likely be more changes as time goes on to get things just right for the 18-hole, professional level disc course: “You always start with one idea and then, when you get physically on the land and start laying out the course and talking about how the flow is, it’s going to change. That’s why we are not going with permanent installations for the first year or two. It will all be mobile. There will be nothing that’s permanently installed as far as concrete in the ground. They will be permanent baskets, quality baskets out there but they are going to be easily removed without a whole lot of labor. I would guess for the first year there will be a lot of changes. All the changes that Keith and I looked at, they were all logical and it was always going to happen because I didn’t know 100% the flow of the property, especially along the railroad tracks. I knew the tracks were there and there are probably some rules governing how close you can get. I had kind of planned for that. It was definitely one of those things that I believed would have to have a secondary location that I’d already thought about.”
Meek says he had several people eagerly awaiting the fate of the proposal after the meeting. He told the committee that real work now begins on raising funds to get things installed and getting volunteers ready to clean up the course once the project is approved by the city council.
The proposal is expected to return before the full Jacksonville City Council on their June 12th agenda.