Zoned Out, Teed Off

I first learned (one never stops learning, or at least trying to) to play golf on a nine-hole par 3 course named Locust Grove. I played there with my father, my mother, my sisters, and my friends (once even carting our clubs on an RTA bus while wearing our golf shoes). As well as other golf firsts, I also nearly killed a fellow golfer there with an errant shot and nearly had a hole in one (several of them over the years, never an ace, though). Years later I took a couple of my nephews out there a few times. One was even so little he just walked around smacking a plastic ball with a plastic club. A fine place. A few years ago Locust Grove closed. It now sits abandoned next to a "corporate park" waiting for development. I can still distinguish where the holes were, once I look beyond the aging "build to suit" sign and overflowing grass.

A couple years ago Oakwood Country Club closed. It was Cleveland's first (I believe) Jewish country club, built in 1905. I never had the opportunity to play there, but a friend of mine did, several times, and he said it was a nice course. Another friend of mine grew up caddying there, learning the same great life lessons I learned caddying at a different club a few miles away. With a decent lawn mower and a day's work raking some sand traps, the course still looks playable, from what I can tell glimpsing it as I drive by.

In general, Cleveland, let alone the world, hardly misses a couple golf courses; there are plenty of others. Still, I was saddened when I read in the newspaper today that the city of South Euclid (where some of Oakwood sits; part of it's in Cleveland Heights, too) okayed a change in zoning laws allowing the property to be developed for a planned "retail development." The world may not need another golf course, but it, and certainly not South Euclid/Cleveland Heights, really doesn't need another retail development. I suppose I could do some research and drive around and count up the number of vacant store fronts within a two-mile radius of the proposed "Oakwood Commons," but I'm not sure I can count that high, and these days driving around South Euclid/Cleveland Heights streets is an exercise in bone-rattling, pothole-dodging, shock-absorber-killing despair. Just down the road from this latest retail development panacea is Severance Town Center, last decade's hope of commercial revitalization. My beloved former place of employment, Borders, is just one of several empty storefronts there. About the same distance away on another side, a huge empty lot stands where South Euclid tore down its side of the vintage Cedar Center Shopping Plaza a few years ago to make way for--go ahead, guess--a retail development. Nothing shouts with more authority, "Welcome To South Euclid" quite like that flattened empty lot. Yep, South Euclid is ripe ripe ripe for more retail development.

Look, I don't know suburban development from a weedy abandoned lot, but something tells me if the powers that be concentrated on improving the quality of life around here it would be easier to fill up the scores of empty retail spaces littering the area. How about a pretty much already laid out park where Oakwood is? How about making the roads drivable? How about getting these investors to ante up some money to improve the schools? Hmm, nice roads, nice parks, nice schools--people might want to live here and spend their money in retail developments.

Bah, I know I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just sad that after years of driving by Oakwood and catching a glimpse of a well-manicured golf hole and somebody hitting a five iron (and what a great thrill to play on a course like Oakwood, an oasis of green surrounded by miles of concrete), soon I'll be puttering by, waiting at more traffic lights, stuck in traffic big enough to slow my commute time but ultimately I bet not enough traffic to keep stores from falling empty, and staring at the same old retail development fixtures (Geez, right now the nearest Dick's is a whole five miles away and I can't even tell you how far a Chik-Fil-A is)--and probably still dodging potholes. Progress. You go South Euclid!