Keesmaat unveils plan to transform city-owned golf courses into community spaces

Toronto: Mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat has unveiled her plans to transform three “under-utilized” city-owned golf courses into community spaces.

Speaking with reporters at Rouge National Urban Park in Scarborough on Monday morning, Keesmaat said the three outdoor spaces “don’t represent a good use of public land” as they are operating at a net loss.

Don Valley Golf Course, Scarlett Woods Golf Course and Dentonia Park Golf Course are subsidized by taxpayers and members are required to pay an undisclosed fee, according to Keesmaat.

“We should be looking to the future and proposing uses that create spaces for everyone in our city and recognizing that our communities are changing and the types of things that we do in our public space ought to be changing too,” she said. “That’s why I think in all of these areas we can work with communities in order to create the uses that will work best for that community.”

“They (the golf courses) are a massive amount of land and land is an incredible resource in this city that we shouldn’t leave closed half of the year.”

The city’s capital plan for 2018-2026 has set aside nearly $10 million for improvements to these golf courses, Keesmaat said.

“Today, our golf courses operate at a loss, they are only accessible through a fee and not only that, they are only used half of the year so we have this incredible oppourtunity to use our city-owned resources to ensure that we are creating spaces for new arenas and cricket patches and bike trails and skating rinks and cross-country skiing trails,” she said.

“We can do this on our golf courses that are currently on transit corridors and I’ve proposed today to initiate a process to work with communities to ensure that these are spaces that are accessible and available to everyone in our city.”

A spokesperson for mayoral candidate John Tory’s campaign said the city is already reviewing the usage of golf courses in Toronto but did not provide any further comment.

A municipal election for Toronto is set for Oct. 22.