Help Us Save Lions Municipal Golf Course!      

August 06, 2008 AAS

COMMENTARY
Why UT will keep the field lab at the Brackenridge tract
Lawrence E. Gilbert Jr., LOCAL CONTRIBUTOR

When I first arrived in Austin as an undergraduate in the early 1960s, the University of Texas enrolled about 20,000 students, and Austin was bounded by private and un-crowded public land. Every biology and geology field course I took at UT exposed me to hands-on learning in nature, and the spot most often visited was an unnamed site that later became the Brackenridge Field Laboratory. Many of the other habitats we used along Shoal and Barton Creeks are now overrun and greatly degraded biologically, but the Brackenridge lab is still used today to provide hands-on field experience to hundreds of undergraduates a year.

Thanks to support from Chairman Frank Erwin, the UT System Board of Regents approved the Brackenridge lab plan in 1962, allowing the National Science Foundation to fund the construction of lab buildings, animal enclosures, ponds and wells on more than 80 acres. The foundation required the university to keep the area as a field lab for at least 20 years.

The existence of the lab was an important factor in my decision to accept the offer of a faculty position at UT. When I assumed directorship of the Brackenridge lab in 1980, it was only 13 years old and yet we soon faced the end of the 20-year agreement with the National Science Foundation that could spell the end of the lab. It was clear that university administrators who must deal with the big picture of university finances were aware that significant funds could be generated by developing the lab and other sectors of the Brackenridge tract. By then the lab's value as a magnet for excellent faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows was clear. Many indicated its value in their decision to come to UT.

National Research Council rankings of graduate programs in 1986 placed the two departments most supported by the Brackenridge lab — botany and zoology, at first and seventh nationally. That recognition, along with the real estate market crash in 1987, combined to give the lab another few decades of life.

Recently, UT's graduate program in ecology, evolution and behavior was ranked eighth in the country by U.S. News & World Report — the highest ranked unit in the biological sciences at the university. This program and its ranking rely on the Brackenridge lab.

Without question, the lab remains the magnet that allows UT to land its choice of top faculty and graduate students amid intense national competition. Even faculty who do not plan to work at the lab may teach on the site or have graduate students who do research and/or teach there. The lab essentially provides "on-campus" access for hands-on education and research. I teach there myself, and I know firsthand that many students are transformed by their exposure to nature. Some then try to take every class that uses the site and even return for independent research. Indeed, student research provides the backbone of our data archive. For example, in a now famous case, a graduate student dissertation provided a pre-fire ant baseline of the ant community at the Brackenridge lab in the late 1970s and later in 1983-84, an undergraduate's honors project documented the details of how the invasion proceeded. Those student studies provided the platform for our current fire ant biological control project and for ultimately attracting $5 million in external funding.

I've come to regard the lab as George Brackenridge's $200 million endowment for the university's integrative biology program, a program that will increase in importance as humans continue to stress the ecological systems and biodiversity of the planet. The lab's 100-year-old quarry has come to support salamanders, cliff frogs, grey foxes and even porcupines, and this teaches students the prospects of ecological restoration. Seeing the trajectories of change in fire ant populations and helping collect current data offers lessons in ecological dynamics that could never be absorbed from a textbook or class lecture.

The Brackenridge lab provides a place where students make novel discoveries in the field that change what we teach the next semester or even stimulates faculty research initiatives. I believe this describes the highest and best mission of a great university, and the lab's contribution to that mission will be immensely magnified by a 100-year commitment to teaching and research on that site.

I believe each of UT's regents aspire to see the University of Texas leading the rankings in overall academics and research programs. Surely they will not wish to let us slip in a key area where we already compete successfully.

Gilbert is a professor of integrative biology and director of the Brackenridge Field Laboratory.

July 22, 2008- Austin American Statesman
Muny's flora and fauna

Lions Municipal Golf Course is more than just a place of massive, old oak trees and grassy fairways. During my most recent round of golf at Muny, I saw deer, armadillos, a red fox, frogs, turtles, a red-tailed hawk and assorted other local birds.

This is not just a matter of saving a golf course but of preserving Austin green space and part of a way of life for many in this town.

Golf may indeed be a good walk spoiled, especially the way I play, but last week I had a good walk among Muny's flora and fauna. Please don't spoil that.

JOEL RUBINSTEIN
rubjoel@gmail.com
Austin

July 22, 2008- Austin American Statesman

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Brackenridge tract future

As a 16-year-old who has spent her entire life in Central Austin, I am appalled that the University of Texas is so eager to develop the Brackenridge tract. Green space contributes to the appeal of living in Central Austin. The "blue-ribbon committee's" willingness to destroy something that contributes to UT's mission of being a first-class university — the Brackenridge Field Laboratory — is disturbing.

As I enter my junior year at Austin High, UT's integrative biology program is high on my college list because it is one of the best such programs in the nation. The field laboratory is essential and valuable to students because of its size, accessibility and its 40-plus years of priceless data on its ecosystems. But if the lab is turned into yet another vertical mixed-use development that is gobbling up the central city's green space, then the program's and UT's reputation will suffer.

EMILY MIXON
Emily_elizabeth192@yahoo.com
Austin

July 21, 2008- Austin American Statesman EDITORIAL
Field Lab is overlooked in UT redevelopment discussions
The Brackenridge Field Lab is important to UT's mission
In the intense discussions over the future of the University of Texas' Brackenridge tract along Lady Bird Lake in West Austin, the Lions Municipal Golf Course has drawn the most attention.

Golfers and neighbors are stirring the pot to keep the course, known as Muny, open for duffers who like the course and the inexpensive cost to play. "Save Muny" bumper stickers can already be seen around town.

Somewhat overlooked in the conversation about the land is the only academic operation on the 346-acre tract, the Brackenridge Field Laboratory on Lake Austin Boulevard. The 88-acre lab is a valuable part of the integrative biology program, the most highly ranked of UT's life science programs.

At the lab, undergraduate and graduate students have studied ecology, climate change and the evolution of plant and animal species over a 40-year time span. That's where the flies that attack fire ants were used in experiments and where a wasp that attacks an invasive species of cane grass is being studied.

Four decades of observation and experimentation have produced a valuable database for biologists and ecologists. The lab's urban setting and close proximity to the university and a major bus line make it a unique habitat for academic field studies. It is considered one of the most intensely used field laboratories in the country.

But the lab's future is in doubt as the university considers a higher use for the Brackenridge tract. A task force appointed by the UT regents last year recommended developing the tract but offered no suggestions about what should be done with the field lab. So its future is unknown.

The university and the New York firm it hired to plan redevelopment of the parcel, Cooper, Robertson & Partners, shouldn't dismiss the field lab as unimportant or easily relocated. Its urban, waterfront location and four-decade history of habitat observation and experimentation cannot be easily duplicated elsewhere.

In fact, there is a strong argument to be made that the field lab should be expanded because it is unique and so valuable to UT's life sciences programs. Also, the lab attracts about $4 million a year in grants to study climate, habitat and ecology.

Supporters of the field lab have a real challenge in explaining its value to the planners, regents, other university administrators and even the state Legislature. Those interests are looking at the Brackenridge property for its economic value — how much money UT can reap — so the lab's academic importance may be overlooked or unappreciated. Dollar signs have a way of clouding the vision.

Cooper, Robertson will hold another public session on the Brackenridge tract on Aug. 12, followed by workshops in November. All who recognize the value of the field lab and believe in its mission should get involved now in the planning process.

There aren't any "Save the Lab" bumper stickers out yet, but maybe there will be.

July 18, 2008- Austin Chronicle

Playing Through

At first, Michael Cooper didn't want to get caught up in the controversy. Golfers seldom do. Playing a game that puts a high premium on comity, they are the least outspoken of all athletes.

But Cooper, a 39-year-old insurance executive, had just won the 2008 Firecracker Open at Lions Municipal Golf Course, and if he wasn't obliged to offer his opinion about the precarious future of the course before that win, he was now. When I caught up with Cooper by phone, he was playing on a slightly better course than Lions – Pebble Beach. But a big barrel of a guy, Cooper wanted me to understand that he's a Muny Man at heart.

I know there are people out there – the Whole Foods crowd – who believe that all golf courses, even scruffy public courses, are necessarily bastions of elitism. I invite those people to play a round at Lions, an 80-year-old layout crammed into 141 acres between Enfield Road and Lake Austin Boulevard. The course doesn't make a fuss about collared shirts, as a lot of clubs do. "You'll see guys playing in tank tops and flip-flops here," says Cooper. "That's what makes it so great."

And although the course is short, a mere 6,000 yards, and players of Cooper's caliber can take it deep, shooting in the low 60s, Lions is not without its creative challenges. It's got par 4s where the smart tee shot is a 7-iron. If you can't work the ball, hitting fades and draws, you're going to have trouble. All of which is why golfers as accomplished as Ben Crenshaw are so fond of Lions, and so anxious to save it once again.

Crenshaw stands in opposition to his fellow Austinite and former University of Texas teammate Tom Kite, who is contriving to cancel the city's lease on land owned by UT, and convert Lions and the surrounding area into an upscale resort course. "You're not maximizing the value of the property," he recently told the Austin American-Statesman.

Of course, that all depends on how you define "value." If all you mean is the financial profitability of the real estate, Kite is surely correct. But value can mean so much more than that. It can mean personality and spirit and accessibility – attributes that Crenshaw and his beloved Lions have in spades and that the calculating Kite never has.

And Cooper? Where does he come down on all this?

"I'd rather not get into that," he first said. But then he started talking about the thrill of winning the Firecracker for the second time, playing against the 15-year-old phenom Brenden Redfern and the 62-year-old six-time winner Billy Clagett, and he couldn't help himself. "I'm a property-rights guy," he admitted. "But I will say this. Here's a perfect opportunity for the citizens of Austin to step up and save Lions."

It may not be quite that simple. The UT Regents may not be interested in offers from the city. But basically, he's right. If there's the will to save Lions, there's a way to save Lions.

We can start by telling Kite to kiss off.

Please write Mr. Hackett at playingthrough@austinchronicle.com.

July 18, 2008- Austin Business Journal 

As a very established Austin resident, I have clear perspective on the Brackenridge Tract, and Muni Golf Course in particular. I went through Austin public schools, graduated from UT and played golf at Muni myself. As an adult, my husband, three children and I played Muni and my daughter captained her Anderson High golf team that used Muni often. For years my six Austin grandchildren and their parents have frequented Muni. We are a small sample of the typical Municipal Golf Course aficionados for whom this Austin classic, tradition and landmark must be preserved. As a family with five UT-Austin graduates, I still will say that UT has enough land and other resources that it can permit some traditions of this community to remain sacrosanct for posterity. Maximize revenue elsewhere, not on General Brackenridge's legacy.

-JoAn Baird 

July 17, 2008- Austin American Statesman 

Muny supporters

Re: July 6 article "Can golfers, residents 'Save Muny?"

Tom Kite said, "The University of Texas has basically given golf to the citizens of Austin." The truth is, Lions Municipal Golf Course pays UT a lease of $345,600 a year. That money comes from green fees paid by the golfers; nothing is subsidized.

Civic entrepreneur Pike Powers said, "We don't want this course to sit idle." Muny serves 67,000 rounds of golf a year. Does that sound idle?

Austin designer Roy Bechtol said their plan is a "rebirth of Muny." To those who have had access to it since 1924, it would be a death sentence for Muny.

Muny offers an affordable golf experience to everyone. No initiation fee, annual membership or dues required. It should remain accessible to all the families of Austin, not just an elite few.

RON and MARCIA MACHA
Buda

Undoubtedly, the golf course that Bechtol would design to replace Lions would be no rebirth. In fact, it would bear no resemblance to the original.

What makes Lions so popular is not just its location and price. It's that the golf course is just plain fun and an easy walk for players of all ages and skills. It has more charm in any of its holes than anything Bechtol or another modern architect would design.

What we do not need in Austin is another over 7,000-yard course that appeals only to good golfers, that is unplayable except in a cart, and is affordable only to the wealthy.

I hope readers will remember that the team of Powers/Bechtol/Kite will only make money if Lions is bulldozed. Therefore, I suggest we take with a grain of salt any recommendations they have regarding the future of Lions.

HENRY CIOLINO
Austin

July 1, 2008- West Austin News
Op-Ed

I was lucky enough to grow up in Tarrytown in the late 1950’s and ‘60’s, and experience the bliss of living in a great neighborhood with recreational facilities that were first rate.   Even with access to the lakes, the small city parks such as Reed, Triangle, and Westenfield, Deep Eddy, and the scattered baseball diamonds, the heart of it all always seemed to be Lions Municipal Golf Course.  For those of us who grew up here in West Austin, and learned golf at Lions, we call this venerable golf course with the utmost affection -- Muny.

I am one of the Co-Chairs of the “Save Muny” Committee that has organized to resist the development of the Brackenridge Tract by the University of Texas Board of Regents, that own the land and currently lease it to several entities.  The Regents have hired a New York urban planning firm, Cooper, Robertson & Partners, and have given them a 5.1 million dollar contract to come up with two or more master plans for development of the entire 345 acre tract -- 141 of these contain Muny, which is leased by the City of Austin.   The rest of the Tract consists of WAYA (the West Austin Youth Association), Oyster Landing, the LCRA (the Lower Colorado River Authority), the UT Student Housing at Colorado and Brackenridge Apartments, the UT Biological Field Laboratory, Randall’s, the Gable Apartments, the CVS Pharmacy and the 7-11.

The development of these acres would be a major blow to the long-standing culture of West Austin.  The increased traffic congestion and population density from any redevelopment would have a severe and irreversible impact on the area.  It is the mission of “Save Muny” to encourage negotiation between the City of Austin and the University of Texas to sell, transfer or exchange land for the acres containing Muny and WAYA.  We wish for the City to retain this affordable, historic municipal course that is now celebrating its 85th year, thereby continuing to provide a recreational green space for ALL citizens of Austin, including UT students, staff and alumni.
 
We at “Save Muny” also feel the UT Biological Field Laboratory and the UT student housing at the Colorado and Brackenridge apartments are both extremely valuable assets for the community and should remain in their present locations.

The University of Texas is one of the richest institutions in America.  It has millions of acres of land and a Permanent Fund of close to $14 billion, yet the Regents are considering destroying the heart of a neighborhood for commercial and residential development.  This is so very wrong, yet may become a reality due in part to the fact that only 1 (James Huffines) of the 9 regents lives in Austin!

We urge you to contact your City Council Representative and ask them to help save our neighborhood.  If you are interested in supporting this cause, please go to our website, www.savemuny.com and sign up.  You can post comments, donate, and read about the historic moments that have taken place at Muny over the years.

We urge you to join with us to save the essence of our community.  

Peter Barbour
Co-Chair Save Muny Committee
 
July 8, 2008- Daily Texan
VIEWPOINTS: "Save Muny"
It looks like our University's ever-increasing demand for money will soon claim another victim. As funding from the state stagnates, our regents are being forced to get creative in seeking newer, steadier income for UT's essential (and non-essential, as the case of the University's private jet may be) spending. According to an extensive article in Sunday's Austin American-Statesman, the latest target appears to be painted on the verdant greens of Lions Municipal Golf Course, or more precisely, on the valuable land on which it has rested for more than 80 years.

"Muny," as the course is affectionately known, currently operates under a $345,000 lease that the city of Austin holds with the University. No one doubts that the land, which is nestled nicely between Lady Bird Lake and the well-to-do Tarrytown neighborhood, could be worth much more if sold or given over to private development. Despite hosting more than 67,000 rounds of golf per year, the course's low greens fees ($18 on weekdays) and excellent discounts for junior and senior citizens means the city (and consequently, the University) makes little money from Lions.

Now a host of Austin developers, including Longhorn golfing legend Tom Kite, want to transform the course into a "fitness-themed" resort featuring a hotel, spa and conference center alongside "development parcels" (read: country club McMansions). Though "cost and other details remain unclear," our university appears to be keenly interested in the possibilities. Last June, the regents commissioned a "master-planning firm" to design two new potential plans for the Brackenridge Tract - land that includes Lions and neighboring student housing and the West Austin Youth Association. The cost for these designs alone could add up to $5.14 million - money the regents (flexing their business muscles) will likely be eager to recoup - with "maximum benefit" for the University and its friends, of course.

But those licking their lips at the thought of a 500-acre Austin snack haven't counted on one thing - you, and the rest of the general public. Already, a grassroots campaign to "Save Muny" has kicked up resistance against development for the course and the surrounding area. Additionally, influential neighbors of the course, including Ben Crenshaw, another Austin-bred PGA champion, have mobilized against the increase of traffic and sprawl that the destruction of West Austin's leafy "lungs" would bring. The public has turned out by the hundreds for meetings about the future of the tract, with most believing the city should simply purchase the course outright from the University in order to save one of the city's remaining untouched jewels.

- Andrew Vickers
 
July 6, 2008- Austin American Statesman
Lions course fans debate its future
Pike Powers, Tom Kite proposal for major development centered on golf is opposed by some with fond memories of Tarrytown neighborhood's Muny links.

By Kevin Robbins
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 06, 2008

On a hot Saturday evening in early June, a few hundred friends of Lions Municipal Golf Course watched the sun slip behind the hills of West Austin. They listened to a rock band play cover songs on the range and browsed autographed golf pictures, football helmets and baseball jerseys for silent auction in the small, old clubhouse. And they tried to keep the ground from convulsing under their feet.

Speakers took the stage and pleaded for the salvation of the 80-year-old municipal golf course in Tarrytown. Similar campaigns spared the $20-a-round course from threats of demolition in 1973 and 1987, but organizers of the benefit concert and auction last month conveyed a far graver urgency to the sympathizers sitting cross-legged and nibbling brisket on the practice tee.

Unite, they begged, or risk losing Lions forever.

The newest incarnation of the struggle to protect Lions promises to be the most dramatic yet. A collision of forces pits friends against friends, allies against former allies and graduates of the University of Texas, many of them donors to the school, against their alma mater.

Even famed golfers Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw, both Texas exes, are divided over what to do about Lions.

A fitness-themed development plan — with a bigger, modern golf course routed by Kite and Austin designer Roy Bechtol — is being fashioned by a group of influential business leaders including civic entrepreneur Pike Powers.

Although cost and other details remain unclear, the project includes a hotel, spa, clubhouse, conference center and 16-acre practice ground, as well as 18 to 20 "development parcels" sprinkled around and inside the golf course.

Kite and Bechtol have connections to Lions that stretch back decades.

"What this is, is preserving the game of golf on the tract," said Bechtol, a nationally known golf course architect raised in Tarrytown.

"If you will, a rebirth of Muny."

The University of Texas System owns the rolling, timbered land the course has occupied since it opened as a Lions Club course in 1928. Now the Board of Regents is considering other ways to use the valuable property, part of a 500-acre gift nearly a century ago from Col. George Washington Brackenridge.

"You're talking about acres that act as lungs for that neighborhood," said Save Muny advocate Zack Fleming, a former assistant golf professional at Lions.

The regents retained a New York planning firm in May to create at least two distinct sets of recommendations. Those are due in a year.

The two previous efforts to keep Lions have preserved an affordable place to play golf in a leafy, tranquil setting amid the affluent neighborhood of Tarrytown. But with state financial support in decline as a percentage of UT-Austin's budget and a desire to elevate the university's status even higher among American universities, the regents seem more determined than ever to extract more income out of the so-called Brackenridge tract.

"This is not something we cannot work out," said Dick Kemp, a veteran of the 1989 "Save Muny" campaign, to the concert crowd in June.

An Austin developer who learned a proper golf swing at Lions, Kemp had a significant part in negotiating the current golf-course lease between the city and the university.

That lease, scheduled to expire in 2019, allows the city to operate Lions for $345,600 a year through 2009, when the amount increases incrementally.

But some supporters of Lions said they fear the lease could be broken. If that happens, the 141-acre course could be little more than gauzy memories and scrapbook pictures by 2019.

Supporters of the course say the soul of Austin golf is at stake.

They wonder where the next Ben Crenshaw or Tom Kite, who played junior golf at Lions, will learn to carve tee shots around a wooded dogleg. They ponder the civic benefit of providing a fair and inviting golf ground to people of all ages, abilities and incomes.

They question where those who play the 67,000 rounds of golf played annually — 3,200 of them by youths 18 and younger, 15,000 by people 62 and older — at Lions will go. They see a relic, worth preserving, that makes Austin Austin.

"It goes down deeper than just the golf course," said longtime Lions player Billy Clagett.

Clagett, who sells golf carts, is among the 188 contestants competing today in the third and final round of the Firecracker Open at Lions. Among the champions of the 62-year-old amateur tournament are Crenshaw, Kite and current PGA Tour player Omar Uresti.

Clagett has more Firecracker titles than any of them. He's claimed the P.W. Curry Trophy six times.

Can anyone win seven? Can the Firecracker at Lions survive so someone might have a chance to win seven?

The answer is tangled in other questions.

With all that it's up against, can Muny be saved again? And should it be?

The 'maximum benefit'

By early June, when Kemp and the other Save Muny organizers staged their rally, principals with the New York master-planning firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners had spent enough time in Austin to begin to appreciate the sentiment behind the effort to spare Lions.

But they also had a charge from the regents, who agreed to pay the firm up to $5.14 million, to explore a number of possibilities.

Including the golf-course lease, revenue from the 345-acre Brackenridge tract amounts to about $940,00 a year for UT-Austin. The land could be worth far more, a suspicion articulated in 2006 when James Huffines, the chairman of the regents at the time, ordered a 10-member task force to devise a plan "to utilize the asset to the maximum benefit" of UT-Austin.

"There's the potential for anything," said David McGregor, the project director for Cooper, Robertson. "Looking at everything is also looking at keeping things."

The Save Muny constituency is one of many involved in the debate over future uses of the Brackenridge tract.

The tract includes more than 500 student apartments, a youth sports complex and a biological field laboratory researching, among other issues, fire ants. Parents worry that development might affect Tarrytown's schools. Residents of the neighborhood fret about increased traffic and the possibility that pavement and pollution could replace flora and fauna.

"That's what we said back in the '70s: It's urban green space," said Mary Arnold, an environmental activist and key veteran of the two previous Save Muny efforts.

Some urban green space will be preserved on the tract, McGregor has said. What won't be known for months is whether that green space will include a golf course.

And, if it does, if it will be a golf course that even resembles Lions.

About a mile upstream from Lions and the Brackenridge tract, in a waterfront office with a fleet of inboard ski boats docked on Lake Austin, a design for a dramatically different course sits in a conference room adorned with routings and topographic maps from over the world.

This new, unnamed golf course in the offices of Bechtol Golf Design begins and ends on Lady Bird Lake. Five holes would be on or near the water. The other 13 would be built on the existing Lions site.

'Austin-centric' plan

The course designed by Bechtol and Kite is part of a sweeping development proposal that would swallow the entire Brackenridge tract.

Powers, a retired lawyer, said his partners include up to 50 individuals from Austin and beyond. Details about the uses beyond the golf course are vague. Powers said the theme would address the study and pursuit of health and conditioning.

"We've built a whole plan around fitness," said Powers, a UT-Austin Law School graduate and longtime Tarrytown resident who led successful efforts to attract high-tech developments such as Sematech and Applied Materials to Austin.

"It's Austin-centric," Powers said of the proposed development. "It's compatible with who we are."

He declined to say how much it might cost. Powers also declined to speculate about when the plan might be introduced to the master planners.

"None of us really knows what comes next," he said. "We have to wait 'til the master planners deliver their product."

Representatives of Cooper, Robertson plan to meet with the public again in August for an "informational session" to present their early findings. The firm has scheduled a weeklong public "workshop" in November to unveil an early, and malleable, suggestion of its two or more plans.

Powers' plan, and its golf course, has been seen by few people.

The 7,133-yard golf course would include new water features and a stream that would lead to Lady Bird Lake. Long "creek" bunkers, similar to the sandy waste areas common to courses in North and South Carolina, would define the edges of many holes.

The old Lions clubhouse would be restored, with the goal of converting it into an Austin golf museum. The new course would preserve the par-4 16th and return it on the scorecard to No. 7, its original place in the Lions sequence.

"This saves Muny," Bechtol said. "This takes Muny to the next level. I'm trying to blend reality with history."

Like many involved in the debate over the tract, Bechtol knows every contour of Lions. He grew up near the course, attended the schools near the course and hopped the fence to play the course as a boy.

"I've lived and breathed the place for 50 years," Bechtol said.

But, under his proposal, the game of golf on the Brackenridge tract would change.

The new course, which could cost more than $10 million to build, probably would become a resort course, with higher green fees and fancier accoutrements — about as near to Lions as a persimmon is to titanium.

Powers has suggested the course adopt a fee structure that would allow people from certain ZIP codes, for instance, to play for less money. It's a concept used with success at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, Calif., and the Black Course at Bethpage State Park in New York.

"We don't want this course to sit idle or vacant because it's too expensive to play," said Powers, who employs the word "rejuvenation" in describing his plan.

"The (Lions) golf course needs to be rejuvenated to make it competitive," Powers said.

Preserve or makeover?

The Save Muny movement has expressed no interest in rebirth or rejuvenation. Advocates of Lions prefer to salvage the 6,000-yard course as it looks today, preserving everything from the massive tree in the middle of the No. 2 fairway to the modest green fee that gives access to anyone with a shirt, a ball, a bag of clubs and the desire to play.

"It's owned by one group, it's used by another group and you're not maximizing the value of the property. The University of Texas has basically given golf to the citizens of Austin since Muny has existed," said Kite.

He and Bechtol have completed five golf-course designs as a team, including Comanche Trace in Kerrville. They have six others in formal development, including four in Texas.

Kite said the elimination of Lions is likely. His and Bechtol's plan, Kite said, is a compromise that responds to that potential loss.

But Crenshaw, who lives a short stroll from Lions, said: "There's no question the atmosphere would change."

Crenshaw and Kite were rivals in junior golf. They won national championships at Texas before their long and decorated careers on the PGA Tour. They're both enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame. They hold very different opinions on the future of Lions.

They tried earlier this year in Hawaii to resolve them. While playing a tournament there. Kite and Crenshaw met over lunch to talk about the new design. By that time, Crenshaw already had announced his position. He wanted to save Lions.

"I'd made up my mind," Crenshaw said.

The debate underscores a broader issue affecting municipal golf in many American cities. Around the time of the Save Muny concert and auction last month at Lions, Golfweek magazine published a report describing a crisis in municipal golf.

The report suggested that many of the trends coloring the Brackenridge tract situation have been responsible for a slow decline in the number of municipal golf courses.

It cited factors such as "strained city budgets" and "increased real estate development pressures."

"You just can't continue to lose these inner-city golf courses," argued Kemp, who rallied supporters at the concert and auction in June.

Kemp, the Austin developer, served more than 30 years as chairman of the city golf advisory board, which helps set policies governing Austin's five municipal courses. Kemp said the goal of Save Muny is to acquire Lions — with the help and authority of the city — once and for all.

"We can pay cash. We could trade land," he speculated. "We don't want to penalize the university. We just want to save the golf course."

In January 2007, then-City Manager Toby Futrell and outgoing City Council Member Betty Dunkerley announced the city would be interested in acquiring Lions.

City Manager Marc Ott declined to comment last week on the issue.

Meanwhile, the planners from Cooper, Robertson organized a public meeting on a recent Wednesday night in late June at the headquarters of the Lower Colorado River Authority. More than 150 people filled a conference room a short distance from the 15th tee at Lions.

Some wore T-shirts bearing the slogan "Save Muny," with "The Best Little Golf Course in Texas" on the back.

The planners released the early results of an online survey about the Brackenridge tract. The survey asked respondents what they knew about the tract. Of its 11 current uses, Lions was the most familiar — 97 percent of the 422 respondents knew about the course.

At the public meeting, the planners described their assignment to the people gathered. They made no commitments to specific uses, such as golf.

"We don't have a lot of answers. We're not there yet. We have a lot of questions," said Paul Milana, one of the Cooper, Robertson partners working on the project.

People were allowed two minutes to speak.

More than 40 did so.

"I've lived in Tarrytown for 42 years," said Ann Fields. "One of the things I've enjoyed the most is the jewel that is Lions Municipal Golf Course."

She paused and added: "Please preserve it as it is."

Applause filled the room. Fields sat down. Her plea hung in the air — right there with the future of Lions.

Stay tuned for further news!

**Remember, all donations at savemuny.com are tax-deductible!**