Historic golf course gets grant for construction, equipment
Maintaining a golf course takes a lot of work. Maintaining the oldest golf course in the United States takes even more work.
Foxburg Golf Preservation formed as a nonprofit to help raise money for projects at the Foxburg Country Club, and the group received a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development on Tuesday to fund maintenance of the course.
Andy Rapp, president and founder of Foxburg Golf Preservation, said the nonprofit is organizing a committee to help plan for the future of the 135-year-old greens, to keep the historic course operational.
“We're trying to maintain the oldest active golf course, and that comes with a huge responsibility,” Rapp said. “We started the Foxburg Golf Course Preservation so that people interested in golf history, American golf heritage, we offer a solution to give back and to help us.”
Rapp said the preservation group applied for the grant in September, specifically for funding of “construction and equipment.” The grant money will likely be used for the course’s water irrigation system, which Rapp said is old and needs work to modernize. But the ensuing plans for the course will be finalized by a committee.
“We still have huge financial milestones to achieve to come up with the complete funding for whole restoration,” Rapp said. “Before we spend the first dollar, we want to know where the last dollar is going. We want to make sure there is a strategic plan in place, that we're not getting ahead of ourselves.”
According to Rapp, the nonprofit aims to raise $2 million to fully restore the course.
Rob Foust, a board member for the Foxburg Country Club, said among the biggest expenses for the course’s upkeep are the trees, which have been going without maintenance for years.
“We need to do some tree maintenance because the roots are going underneath greens,” Foust said. “A lot of them haven't been trimmed ever. We're going to be cutting down around 30 to 40 trees because they are destroying a lot of our greens.”
Foust said that while the project as a whole will take years to complete, the DCED grant will be a good start to the necessary work.
“There's a lot of projects that are going to happen,” Foust said. “This is a nice grant to get us the watering system, because that's hurting us more than anything.”
