A group of Haines residents is pushing for the borough to take ownership of the Valley of the Eagles Golf Links and lease it to a nonprofit in order to keep it open to the public.

“It’s a way to keep the course in the community,” said Sean Gaffney at a Monday parks and recreation advisory committee meeting. In this scenario, Gaffney said, the course could still be used for golfing, but also for hiking, skiing, and other outdoor recreation.

The future of the course is “a little fuzzy right now,” Derek Poinsette, executive director of Takshanuk Watershed Council, told the CVN. “There are a lot of fish and wildlife habitat values out there. We would like to see those conserved.”

Discussion about the course has been ongoing for months, with residents floating ideas about both private and nonprofit ownership. The 150-acre golf course has been for sale for several years, with an asking price of $1.6 million.

“We haven’t had a whole lot of interest,” said Stan Jones, who owns the property with his wife Kathy Pardee-Jones.

Now, discussion has coalesced around the idea of borough ownership, but details about the transfer of the land are unclear. Poinsette raised the possibility that the council could purchase the land with grant funds and then donate it to the borough.

“We potentially don’t have the capacity to own and manage that much land,” Poinsette said. “(Maybe it’s) more in the public’s interest for it to be publicly owned. But maybe not. That’s what we’re exploring.”

Golfer Tom Heywood, among the advocates for converting the course to public land, hoped that the space would eventually become a multi-use recreational area.

“My number one hope is that it could still be used as a golf course in the future,” Heywood said, adding that the space would ideally be multi-use.

He acknowledged that maintaining the land as a golf course came with a price tag. “It couldn’t be done on a volunteer basis,” he said. “Right now, we’re trying to get a feel for exactly how Stan and Kathy run the business and what kind of costs we would be looking at.”

Jones said he has offered a year of free labor to assist a new owner with the transition.

“It would be nice to see it stay as a golf course,” Jones said, but ultimately the future of the land is “a matter of who would actually take ownership.”

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