Tenders open to build a clubhouse on Warringah golf course after sports field strategy approved

A TENDER will finally be issued for management of Warringah golf course, surrounding sport fields and a future club house on the district park site.

A TENDER will finally be issued for management of Warringah golf course, surrounding sport fields and a future club house on the district park site.

It follows administrator Dick Persson finalising the controversial sports ground usage and golf course review at Tuesday night’s Northern Beaches Council meeting.

The tendering process for a multi-sport clubhouse on district park was halted after a two-year consultation process in September, pending the review.

The review was launched in response to calls from the Manly-Warringah-Pittwater Sporting Union to reassess the amount of golf courses, when compared to playing fields, citing a shortage of sporting venues.

Manly Leagues Club’s North Manly Bowling Club will likely tender for the clubhouse rights. Picture: Annika Enderborg.

As part of the strategy, the council will issue a 20-year lease for the southern nine holes of the golf course, with a five-year lease on the northern end. Mr Persson said it gives an elected council the option to convert half of the course into multi-use sporting facilities.

Warringah Golf Club president Scott Campbell criticised the council’s strategy, raising at the meeting several concerns he and others which had “for all intents and purposes appear to have been ignored”.

Mr Campbell said 55 per cent of submissions on the strategy called for the retention of Warringah golf course “not withstanding council’s unflinching effort to sway public opinion”.

He argued the report prepared on golf courses on the peninsula, “failed to look at the future needs of golf on the northern beaches, despite that being part of its terms of reference”.

Administrator of the Northern Beaches Council, Dick Persson. Picture: Adam Yip.

The golf club also argued the largest increase in age demographic was over-55s — also the prime golfing age.

“It focused on member numbers at the exclusion of social golf rounds. The report only mentions public rounds in passing without any focus on where these rounds were played,” Mr Campbell said on Tuesday.

“Over 40 per cent of those rounds are played at Warringah.”

But Mr Persson said bulldozing the clearing of the council-owned course was a last option in a wider strategy including: better use of existing fields, synthetic turf and discussing options for use of school fields.

Warringah golfers are not. Picture: Adam Yip.

“I totally reject the golf club proposition that this is a preconceived view and nothing has changed from the beginning,” he said. “It (conversion to sport fields) has gone from the first cab off the rank to the last cab off the rank, only to be hailed if all the other measures aren’t successful.”

He said there was no hidden agenda other than meeting the sporting needs of the community, which is currently at a 21ha shortfall set to increase to 40 in 15 years.

“That is not just kids, it is adults, it is women who want to play who are being turned away in their hundreds if not thousands and it is just not good enough to pretend that this is somehow ‘poor me, Warringah Golf Club are being picked on’ — that is just, to be frank, rubbish,” Mr Persson said.