Clapp Golf Course will stay open a little longer than expected

South Wichita’s Clapp Golf Course will stay open and operating until the city can craft a master plan to redevelop the site, Mayor Jeff Longwell said Thursday.

That means the course won’t close Sept. 30, as the Park Board voted to do earlier this month. The latest estimate is that the master plan could be finished late this year or early next year.

And there’s a slight chance that there could still be a golf presence there even after it’s redeveloped.

James Clendenin, the City Council member who represents the area, said he’s been hearing a lot of ideas from residents for how to remake the site.

One of those would be to remodel the existing course into a smaller “executive length” course.

Executive courses are made up mostly of short holes where par is three shots, along with a couple of longer par-four holes.

They’re popular with busy golfers who can’t afford the time commitment to play a full-length course and with seniors who don’t hit the ball as far as they once did.

Wichita doesn’t have an executive course at present.

Shortening Clapp to executive length would free up part of the site for other recreational uses, possibly including walking paths, a gazebo and maybe a water feature for children to play in, Clendenin said.

“It is a very rare piece of property; 95 acres in the middle of a heavily urbanized area,” he said.

He said he envisions it being somewhat like a small-scale version of New York’s Central Park.

The Clapp course. at the corner of Harry and Oliver, has been a center of controversy in the city’s golf community lately.

Nearly 100 people attended the Park Board meeting on closing it. Dozens — including House Minority Leader Jim Ward and Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell — went to the podium to plead with the board to try to save the course.

But the board voted 4-3 to shut it down.

Park and Recreation Director Troy Houtman said Clapp ran $235,000 in the red last year.

About $102,000 of that was for water — twice as much as any other course — because Clapp is the only course that doesn’t have a well or a lake and has to be watered entirely with city drinking water, according to a city report.

The city’s five-course golf system isn’t tax-supported and has to fund itself from greens fees, cart rentals and pro-shop sales. So any money to prop up Clapp has to come from the other courses, Houtman said.

A recent city report concluded that Clapp is the only Wichita golf course that could be successfully shut down and redeveloped for commercial and housing use.

But that idea seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of continuing to use the site for recreational purposes.

This story was originally published July 26, 2018 at 2:30 PM.