PROVO — East Bay Golf Course has become a jewel for the city of Provo, a green space survivor in a sea of concrete, brick and asphalt, a town sprinkled with apartments, parking lots and quite a few commercial buildings sitting vacant with “For Lease” signs dotting windows.
A recent Facebook group “New Provo Developments” declared there is a discussion by city officials and a developer to scrape off a portion of the course for a proposed medical school. If some of the golf lands are sold off, it would be a mistake.
It would be selling out a city legacy.
The 18-hole course, whose defining features are five par-5 holes and lakes, also has a rare seven-hole executive course, and large driving range with three practice greens.
The story of the course really parallels the Greek mythological Phoenix, the miraculous rising of a living entity from ashes. This was once a garbage dump filled with abandoned cans, plastic, milk jugs, refrigerators, rotting food, construction refuse and dirty diapers.
This green space rose from Provo’s discarded junk because, in the 1980s, the federal government granted the city millions of dollars to create wetland green space and a public recreation facility — a golf course. At that time Mayor Jim Ferguson saw the vision of flipping this piece of land into something all could share, replacing the old Timp Golf Course that had served city residents for decades.
East Bay has become a golf training center for a new generation. While the Tiger Woods-era generation didn’t exactly embrace golf, today’s youth do, and according to the Utah Golf Foundation, East Bay is one of the state’s top participation sites for young people.
As of Aug. 28, the UGF reports there were 7,708 Youth on Course (YOC) rounds in Utah this year and 1,998 of those, or 25 percent, were played at East Bay Golf Course. In 2016, UGA executive director Bill Walker says East Bay’s 1,930 YOC rounds was 31 percent of the state of Utah’s 6,188 for that year.
In brief, untouched, unfettered, unadjusted East Bay as it stands today is the most productive creator of youth golfers in Utah, a dynamic trendsetter.
There are 500 students at nearby BYU and Utah Valley University enrolled in golf classes who frequent East Bay and that doesn’t count thousands of students, juniors and seniors who utilize the short executive course each year. The Utah County Boys & Girls Club has made it home for a day of instruction during the Provo Open, which is approaching its 80th year.
Timpview, Provo, Mountain View, Maple Mountain and Orem high schools have all used the course as a training facility and 13 individual or team state championship trophies have come from those schools during the past decade. Golf is the pride of Provo High athletics, especially young women.
East Bay has hosted many Utah State Amateur qualifying tournaments, and just hosted the first-ever Utah Women’s Open and is home to the Provo Open, which has featured Hall of Famers Billy Casper and Johnny Miller along with veteran Senior Tour player Bruce Summerhays.
Over the weekend, the West Coast Conference and BYU hosted a collegiate cross country meet at East Bay and it attracted 50 high schools and 5,000 people attended.
Since investing in a roller machine, the greens roll fabulously, as good as any private country club in the state. Former Utah State Amateur champion, Colorado State star golfer and Provo resident Darrin Overson calls No. 10 the most feared par-4 hole in the state, and it proved so this summer when Provo native Chris Moody won the Provo Open in a playoff.
The water-lined fairways and nearby wetlands have a backdrop of the picturesque Wasatch Mountains, and in the morning the sun peeks over the purple high rock tips and floods the course with a burst of orange-yellow light.
There are turtles, geese, deer, ducks and enough rare birds taking up residence at East Bay that it is listed as a must-stop for bird watchers, some of whom come not only from all corners of Utah but also from out of state, packing binoculars, cameras, journals and reference books to glimpse at fowl.
Runners, naturalists and soccer players in Provo have invested three decades of their hard-earned money in the city, much of it for their recreation, a great chunk of it to enjoy East Bay’s amenities. That’s aside from the swinging of steel and graphite at a dimpled ball in a pristine surrounding.
As one born and raised in Provo, there is great pride in strolling the green swath of well-groomed grass at this layout where I once came with my father and brothers to unload garbage from the back of our old Dodge truck.
East Bay is a successful reclamation project, something that rose from ashes and has brought everlasting value and joy to many who’ve traversed its greens and fairways.
It is an investment in a green space that turned out just as designed by city fathers who had the foresight to accept the federal grant money and convert a community vision.
It is a patch of rare greenery in a sea of glass and steel, parking lots and brick.
Once tinkered with, changed and bartered for to fill the pockets of developers, it will never be the same, never return to what it has become. That gift from Uncle Sam has turned to gold.
It was never intended to become a project for a private enterprise, who might easily underestimate costs, permits and challenges of construction on a former junkyard still emitting methane gas. Do so and we'd trade gold for ordinary lucre.
And that’s the scorecard truth.