Dairy Creek Golf Course gets reprieve; zip line on hold at botanical garden

A master plan will eventually be developed for San Luis Obispo County’s El Chorro Regional Park along Highway 1, and the beloved 18-hole golf course there appeared to receive a temporary reprieve Tuesday.

After hearing from passionate golfers, the county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to develop a master plan for the park with input from the community and to include the issue of water availability.

The supervisors also debated the future of the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden, which leases county land at the regional park, but a proposal to add a zip line remained undecided at the end of the afternoon.

The board voted 3-2, with Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Adam Hill dissenting, to direct county staff to seek the ability to allow a sublease of the botanical garden property so a zip line could be installed that would raise revenue to help support and expand the garden.

Approval of the sublease required a four-fifths vote to pass, however, which on Tuesday did not exist.

“The last step to authorize all of this requires a four-fifths vote, and what we’re hearing now is the vote does not exist to do that, so we would … do this work only to have it fail?” county administrative officer Dan Buckshi asked the supervisors.

“I don’t know if this is going to fail,” Supervisor Lynn Compton said before the vote.

Supervisor Debbie Arnold, who made the motion, said she believes the garden should be able to decide what it wants to do on its leased property.

Friends of the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden wants to form a separate California benefit corporation to develop and maintain a zip line, which would provide ongoing revenue to the nonprofit group.

Gibson and Hill said they would not support a sublease, instead preferring to seek requests for proposals through the parks department.

“I think we need to have an RFP (request for proposal) process that’s fair and completely transparent, and one that’s developed by our parks department,” Hill said.

The board heard from the operators at Vista Lago Adventure Park at Lopez Lake, who said they were interested in submitting a proposal for an ecological zip line tour within El Chorro Regional Park.

Supervisors also heard from numerous golfers who implored the board to leave the 18-hole Dairy Creek Golf Course in place.

The golf course has suffered from a lack of water and, except for the greens that are still regularly watered, much of the course is brown.

A reduced inmate population at the California Men’s Colony, which provides recycled water to irrigate the course, has left the county critically short of water for its 89 acres of turf. There is only enough water to irrigate 35 to 40 acres, according to county parks.

Parks staff proposed transitioning the golf course away from 18 holes within 12 months by keeping the front nine holes but ceasing to water the back nine holes. Parks Director Nick Franco said camping could take place there, events could be held on the driving range, and the course could be redesigned by a golf course architect.

Golfers asked the supervisors to take a step back and delay a decision to change the course.

“It’s our refuge, our socialization, our recreation,” said 83-year-old Mary Pollock, a member of the Dairy Creek Women’s Golf Club. “I feel like I was involved with the birth of this course, so when you start talking about diminishing it I feel like I’m losing something I created.”

But the supervisors did not act on the recommendation, only approving moving ahead with a master plan for the entire park. They have already said they would not use potable water to irrigate the golf course, but several said they didn’t know how the county could keep the course as is.

“The constraints we have is not a matter of the drought,” Gibson said. “We don’t have enough to irrigate the course in a good year.”

This story was originally published October 4, 2016 at 9:05 PM with the headline "Dairy Creek Golf Course gets reprieve; zip line on hold at botanical garden."