The attendant traffic that it alone will generate will be in addition to the extra traffic created by the course itself, never mind the inevitable pollution of garbage-dumpsters and garbage-collection that will attend this facility.

1. General Area Plan

   Salient Points

   • The addition of parking space for golf course users appears to increase the overall parking approximately three-fold
     (This is done at the expense of the Heymann Conservatory which is to be demolished)
   • The new clubhouse is located partly on the golf course, but also partly among the live oak trees that formerly constituted not just a public area, but an unspoilt one at that.
   • The new road that is needed to link the parking lot to the clubhouse complex will be a 'crushed stone drive'. While this is undoubtably preferable to the 20' wide asphalt road that was once being considered, it will be 12' wide, and by bringing vehicular traffic right to the clubhouse will inevitably totally destroy the scenic, quiet and unspoilt nature of the oak grove.
   • An additional building, the cart-shed, will be constructed in the middle of the trees and will be approximately 5,000 sq. feet in area.
   • While the Audubon Institute appears to be currying public favor by drawing in a 'possible extension to Meditation Walk', as plans currently stand the clubhouse complex with its cart-shed and roadway (oops, 'drive') nonetheless effectively annexes about half of the current oak grove for the exclusive use of golfers and other visitors to the clubhouse.
   • As we have been saying for some time, such development within a large stand of historic Louisiana live oak trees is inappropriate, will destroy public enjoyment of this area and will almost certainly endanger the tree themselves

2. Clubhouse Floor Plan

   The clubhouse will have a total area of 8,500 sq. feet. Of this area, a large proportion is dedicated to 'dining', 'dining/meeting' and 'kitchen' areas.

   The Audubon Instiute claims in its Fact Sheet that

   "The primary purpose of the clubhouse is to provide for the administration of the golf course (pro-shop, green fee purchases, cart rentals, golf pro administrative and storage space and location for managing the day time activities on the course)."

   From the plan it would seem that all of these could be accomplished in approximately half the proposed area. As we have suspected from the start the determining factor in the clubhouse plan is the creation of a large 'dining area' which the Audubon Institute refuses to call a 'restaurant'.

   This is significant for a number of reasons:

   • While a 'golf clubhouse' with or without 'food service' is a permitted use in the park under current zoning, a 'restaurant' is not.
   • The Audubon Institute's decision to reject the donation of the old clubhouse, that was offered by the Audubon Golf Club, was made because it did not allow for the kind of facility that the Institute has in mind.
   • Specifically, we expect that the Institute is planning to hire out its new clubhouse with its seating and kitchen facilities for night-time private parties. The location of the old clubhouse, right next to the Walnut Street residents would have made this hard.
   • While the Audubon Institute assured local neighborhood groups that no liquor license would be sought it is in fact planning to serve beer and wine in its dining area.
   • While the clubhouse diagram shows seating for about 40 persons there is another undefined 'meeting/dining' area indicated of approximately the same size.
   • At the same neighborhood group meetings, the figure of '100 to 120 seats' was mentioned.
   • While we would certainly never ever accuse the Audubon Institute of deliberate concealment of their true intentions, we believe that the dining area of the new clubhouse, taken with the size of the kitchen facilities indicated, and the ill defined nature of the 'food service' that they will provide indicates at least the possibility of a new night-time night-spot available for private functions and probably aggressively promoted as such.
   • We believe that by presenting the dining aspect of the new clubhouse as a natural extension of the desire to "provide for the physical comfort and needs of the individuals using the golf course" (Audubon Institute website), they are in fact attempting to create quite a different facility, without having to consider inconvenient zoning variances and hearings.

     Those of us who are opposed to the construction of a new restaurant within Audubon Park, under the guise of a golf clubhouse facility, are alarmed by the following statement taken from their website:

     "If a golf tournament wishes to stay on site after the tournament for food or beverage service, that would be considered a normal operation for the clubhouse. If some other group wishes to use the clubhouse at night, we would consider such a request."
     

     Under this line of reasoning there really is no limit to the uses to which the clubhouse might be put. By talking vaguely of food service for hungry golfers the Audubon Institute is sliding by with a brand new restaurant facility that will bring more traffic into the park and will be available for night time private parties. This may or may not be a good idea (you know what we think), but what is particularly shocking is that the Audubon Institute is being so deliberately evasive about what they really have in mind, and are attempting to stealthily introduce this new facility into the park without the appropriate application for a zoning variance.

We believe that other types of clubhouse, and other configurations of clubhouse and parking facilities could be discussed that would obviate the need to demolish buildings, obviate the need to construct roads and would generally preserve the unspoilt and shared aspects of Audubon Park that the Institute, throught its lack of respect for public benefit is intent on bespoiling for the benefit of a relatively small target audience.

We seek to promote alternative plans that require the Institute to keep not just the golf course but all golf course related construction within the boundaries either of the old course or of the zoo.

We urge the Audubon Institute to take into account the interests of the wider public, and to come clean about its long term plan for the new clubhouse facility.

At the October 15 Public Meeting we will be raising questions about the current design, and asking how such a single-minded, uncaring and self-serving development could have been developed by an organization that has been entrusted to manage and maintain Audubon Park for the benefit of all its users.