Audubon Nature Institute officials maintain they have offered ample opportunity for residents to contribute to the golf course plan since it was hatched in 1999. Now that contracts have been signed with a construction company and a golf course designer, Audubon officials say their hands are tied.

"My question is: Where were all of these people the last two years?" says Ron Forman, president and chief executive officer of the Audubon Nature Institute.

He cites eight sparsely attended public meetings of the Audubon Commission and a May 1999 public hearing where the plan was discussed.

Through its 24 members appointed by the mayor of New Orleans, the commission meets about four times a year and oversees the privately funded Audubon Nature Institute. The institute, in turn, manages nine Audubon facilities, including the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and the zoo.

The resident group, which has named itself after its Web site, Saveaudubonpark.org, claims to have collected nearly 1,500 signatures to stop the golf course overhaul.

Group organizer Debra Howell says Audubon Commission meetings are barely publicized and frequently change locations, making it difficult for residents to stay apprised of new projects.

When residents do show up, "it is not possible for a member of the public to speak," says Cynthia Swan, an Uptown homeowner who says she has attended Audubon Commission meetings for the last 15 years.

Swan says commission meeting agendas do not allow for public comment on commission business and that characterizing them as open forums for discussion is inaccurate.

It wasn’t until late last month, when detailed maps of the planned golf course facelift were posted in Audubon Park, that many residents realized the full scope of the plan, says Howell.

Chief among opponents’ gripes: Too many trees are being cut down, including historic live oaks; sentimental spots such as Hurst Path and Meditation Walk will be eliminated and a bridge over the lagoon permanently barricaded; and a new clubhouse on Magazine Street could add to traffic congestion in the area.

Maria Kron, president of the Uptown Neighborhood Improvement Association, says her group brought up many of the same concerns when Audubon officials met with the group to pitch the golf course plan in May 1999.

"They said they were going to make some revisions and then meet with us again, but they never came back," she says. Many members of her group want to see construction stopped, Kron says.

Audubon officials say 60 or 70 trees will be cut or relocated but none are live oaks. As to the footpaths and bridge, if they were to remain open they would be in the line of golf shots and pose safety threats, officials say. They say that relocating the clubhouse is meant to take traffic pressure off a quiet residential neighborhood behind the existing clubhouse.

Saveaudubonpark.org has scheduled a public meeting on Sept. 4 at the Dominican Conference Center on Broadway to discuss how the group will proceed. Audubon Institute officials, Mayor Marc Morial and City Councilmen James Singleton, Eddie Sapir, Oliver Thomas and Scott Shea have been invited to attend. “We hope to bring enough political pressure on the Audubon Commission and the mayor to stop (construction),” says Howell.

Shea, whose council district includes Audubon Park, is unclear on the city’s role in the matter.

"If I were inclined to step into the middle of this, I’m curious what the city could do at this point," he says. "Contracts have been signed and work has been done."

Still, he says he will attend the meeting and leave open the possibility of reaching a compromise.

Audubon’s critics believe that with as much public money as the organization receives for capital projects it should be more accountable to local citizens.

Audubon will receive $5 million from state and city sources for the golf course renovation, with the balance of the $6 million project coming from private donations. For the most part, Audubon receives public money only for capital construction projects.

Of the various Audubon entities, only the Audubon Zoo gets public money for operations; it receives roughly $200,000 a year from an Orleans Parish tax millage. The other eight Audubon facilities operate solely on revenues generated from ticket, concession and merchandise sales, special programming and donations.

As Audubon has added more facilities to its stable of attractions, the pressure to find new revenue sources to support them has increased, says Dale Stastny, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Audubon Nature Institute.

Proceeds from a new golf course will help, he says. When it opens next fall, the course will charge golfers $18 on weekdays and $25 on weekends to play. That’s up from $8 weekday and $12 weekend rates on the old course.

The increase, in large part, will go to cover the hike in costs to maintain the new course. Stastny says the new course’s annual maintenance budget will be $350,000. "Even in a good year, that would have eaten up most of our revenue from the old course," he says.

During the last two years, the 100-year-old golf course generated around $400,000 in annual revenue for Audubon Nature Institute, a total that includes greens fees and golf cart rentals for the average 32,000 to 35,000 rounds of golf played there each year.

A feasibility study for the new course projects revenue from fees and cart rentals at the new course will reach $780,000 in the first year and hit $1.2 million by the 10th year.

Stastny estimates the institute will see an additional $50,000 to $75,000 in revenue from a pro shop and food court located in the new club house. Accessible only from Magazine Street, the new $1.5 million clubhouse replaces the old clubhouse on Walnut Street, which was privately operated by the Audubon Golf Club.

Answering criticism that the institute is more interested in financial gain than "celebrating the wonders of nature" as its motto claims, Stastny says: "We plead guilty to the charge that we need money to run our facilities."

With private donations hitting a plateau, costs rising and public money sources exhausted, he says, "that money has to come from somewhere."

Revenues from Audubon Nature Institute properties totaled $28.5 million in 2000. Operating expenses in those facilities reached $27 million, according to the institute’s year-end 2000 annual report. Year-end profits go into either a capital expenditure fund for future projects or are reinvested in physical assets, says an Audubon spokeswoman.

Audubon ended a three-year fund-raising campaign last year, which brought in nearly $60 million to pay for the new entrance at the Audubon Zoo and a new sea otter exhibit at the aquarium. A separate Audubon Annual Fund drive raised $266,000 last year, which the organization says is a record high. And the annual Bank One Zoo-To-Do fund-raiser broke the $1 million mark, also an Institute record.

Critics of the golf course plan say the institute is looking to the publicly owned Audubon Park to further its own financial agenda. They say the park was originally designed to be a public oasis for area residents, not a revenue source for its custodian.

Audubon’s Ron Forman says many New Orleanians are simply resistant to change.

The same "negative element" has fought Audubon’s restoration of the zoo and construction of the aquarium and taken issue with plans to build an insectarium downtown, he says. "But you know what? At the end of the day, they all come up and shake my hand and say: 'Man, what a beautiful project. I was with you all the way.'"

Construction of the new Audubon Golf Course began in early August and is expected to end in December, leaving time for new greens and fairways to sprout for a targeted fall 2002 opening.