BATON ROUGE — Traditional Baton Rouge tensions arose Tuesday at a BREC community meeting to consider the next decade of City-Brooks Park and its golf course.
The importance of the century-old, 9-hole golf course and a history of racial division and resulting public facility disparities were flashpoints of the meeting where more than 60 people signed up to speak to BREC leadership about what Baton Rougeans want from the popular park.
Mary Upton said she’s lived in the Garden District for more than 40 years and does not play golf. She still wants the golf course left intact.
“Baton Rouge sometimes doesn’t know what it has,” she said. “I want it to not be touched. When you have a jewel, you protect it.”
Antonia Andreski said thinking of the golf course as a jewel is a problem.
“The metaphor of a jewel keeps coming up, and I think it’s a good one for City Park golf course. Jewels aren’t something you share. They belong to a wealthy few, and the rest of us just get to look but not touch,” she said.
Andreski said she favors expanding running and walking options in the park because that’s the most frequent use of the space.
BREC hired a consultant to develop plans for the future of City-Brooks Park. Residents got a look at them at a meeting last month that was so contentious that police removed two people.
Most of the people who spoke were not big fans of either option, both of which call for a reduction in the size of the golf course.
State Rep. Dixon McMakin, R- Baton Rouge, has put together his own plan drawing on the BREC consultant’s work. Several speakers urged BREC to give that plan more consideration.
McMakin spoke near the end of the meeting to cheers and applause.
“Both plans contain ideas that make some sense, but either plan, if adopted entirely, is a failure,” he said.
McMakin’s plan would modernize the Brooks pool, improve the golf course and add a full-sized track.
Edgar Cage said more attention needs to be paid to the Brooks pool, which opened in 1949 after Willie Brooks and the United Negro Recreation Association raised the money for it. At that time, the public pool at City Park was segregated.
“The pool was more than a recreation facility. It was a center for community life,” Cage said.
Now, it’s a disappointment.
“This pool was given to BREC and the city. Nothing has been done. And, you know, looking around, I hate to say this but it hurts my heart. BREC has put more into the dog park and the dog owners than Brooks pool for Black children and their Black parents. And I think that’s a travesty. That’s a travesty. It needs to be corrected,” Cage said.
David Day told BREC the organization was making a mistake by envisioning beyond what it can manage.
“It’s too grandiose. It will never be maintained. We can’t even maintain what we have,” he said.
Final recommendations will go to the BREC Commission in the fall.
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