A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an op/ed on money-losing municipal golf courses. Saanich is losing $800,000 on Cedar Hill, Abbotsford is losing $115,000 on Ledgeview, West Shore lost $23,000 on Juan de Fuca.

The one city to buck the money-losing trend was Vancouver, whose sheer population keeps their three municipal courses profitable.

But in today’s Vancouver Sun, Don Cayo had a great piece talking about the lost opportunity of City Hall tying up so much land and money in golf. From his column:

The three tie up large tracts of land that, with realistic zoning, would be worth several billion dollars. Yet they hosted a total of only about 164,000 rounds of golf last year, which netted less than $1 million after expenses. Compared to a prime multi-use public space like Stanley Park, they occupy about one-third as much land and were used by barely more than one-50th the number of people.

One alternative to get better value from these under-used spaces would be to convert them into parks, or a mix of recreational facilities that would attract a wider range of visitors.

But at the request of The Vancouver Sun, Paul Sullivan, a partner in the property tax-consulting firm of Burgess Cawley Sullivan, looked at the kind of options that could emerge from a blend of public and private usage.

Sullivan focused on what would happen if just 20 per cent of the land occupied by just one of the golf courses, Langara, were to be sold for well-planned development.

Single-family housing is the only private development that current zoning rules would permit on the strip of Langara land that borders on Cambie Street, he said. But, in keeping with other city plans for this key transportation corridor now that it's served by the Canada Line, it should realistically be approved for five or six times more density.

If this were done, just 9.7 hectares (24 acres) of the 48.5-hectare (120-acre) site would - based on the selling price of other land in the neighbourhood - go for about $675 million. Reasonably dense condo development on this land could house as many as 7,000 people - about one per cent of Vancouver's total population - and could generate more than $10 million a year in property tax revenue. 

"Plus you'd have the $675 million from the sale of the land," Sullivan said. "The prospect of the property tax revenue is nice, but the capital gain is massive."

How massive? Well, if that much money were simply invested quite conservatively, it would easily earn $33 million a year - about five per cent of the city's total property tax levy.

Green space at any cost? Does having three municipally-owned golf courses in one city really make financial sense? Time for cities to think big and get out of the golf business—property taxpayers can’t afford the lost opportunities.