Park users debate disc golf proposal
E. Michael McAleer, though a disc golf player turned ball golfer, hopes to see an 18-hole course built at Robin Hill County Park between Port Angeles and Sequim. -- Photo by Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News
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But Robin Hill belongs to the people of Clallam County. It's a multi-use park that should offer activities to people of all ages and incomes, say others.
So goes the debate over the proposed disc golf course at Robin Hill, a 195-acre swath of forest, meadow and wetland a quarter-mile north of U.S. Highway 101.
Disc golf, aka flying disc golf, is a game in which players throw a flying disc into a basket instead of a hole, in an effort to finish the course with the fewest number of tosses.
It's a popular sport, with 41 courses in Washington state.
Last year, Sequim Realtor E. Michael McAleer asked the Clallam County Parks Department about the chances of building an 18-hole disc golf course on the North Olympic Peninsula, since the closest full-size course is in Bremerton.
"I thought it would be really neat for the community," McAleer said on Tuesday.
"I got the ball rolling, and the county ran with it."
Actually he got the discs and one could say the fur flying.
"I was shocked," at the negative reaction from a segment of Sequim's population, he said.
When Clallam County's parks and fair supervisor, Bruce Giddens, presented the disc course proposal at a public meeting last week, he and McAleer faced dozens of upset horsemen and -women.
This was a rambunctious bunch, Giddens said, though he declined to elaborate.
"There was almost a fist fight at one point," said Kathy Petree, who often rides through Robin Hill on her Arabian, Monι.
She'd urged about 30 fellow members of the Olympic Peninsula Arabian Club to attend the meeting at the Sequim Prairie Grange Hall last Wednesday and they showed up as a bloc.
"It was an ugly public meeting," added Mike McAleer, father of Michael and a prominent real estate broker in Sequim.
The equestrians were "really loud . . . there was applause and booing; just a heap of emotion."
Rural or developed?
The argument over the 20-acre disc golf course is a kind often heard in debates over uses of national parks: Should a public park be set aside for wildlife and relatively few human users, or should it be developed in spots to make way for more people?
Giddens and both McAleers see a disc golf course as a free place to exercise outdoors "for people who want to get away from concrete," as Michael put it.
The course, Michael McAleer added, is designed so flying discs, players, horses and riders can coexist.
He believes the outcry from Petree and other Sequim area equestrians "comes from a 'not in my backyard' feeling.
This is a multi-use park for our county. It's there for people to enjoy."
Petree does enjoy it, just as it is.
"It's so calm and peaceful there," at Robin Hill, but disc golf "is going to take away the magic of the park," she said.
"We're worried that it's going to be causing a lot of noise and disturbance.
Disc golf, Michael McAleer believes, would attract players young and not so young from the north Peninsula and beyond who need only buy a disc. No cart nor clubs are necessary.
The county Parks Advisory Board has approved the disc course, Giddens said.
After Giddens reviews comments from supporters and opponents, he hopes to send the proposal in September to the county Department of Community Development and then to the county hearing examiner for the required conditional use permit.
Giddens estimated that construction of the course, in Robin Hill's southwest corner, would start this fall and be finished next year.
The project will cost the county $40,000, he said, but unlike a ball-golf course, it'll need no additional watering.
The course won't greatly alter Robin Hill, Giddens added.
There will be the baskets into which players toss their discs, and up to 3 acres of brush will need to be cleared for the short fairways, which are much shorter than those of ball-golf courses.
This sport, Giddens said, has the potential of attracting lots of players.
"We've gotten a lot of comments from people within the county who are in favor" of the Robin Hill plan, and "people from outside the county say they'll travel here to play on it," he said.
Park planners took care to design the course to keep the disc-throwing away from the equestrian trails, Giddens added.
And the plans may be modified again to move golfers even farther from horses, or to place screens of foliage between flying disks and the equestrian trails.
Other parks
None of this comforts Petree.
"If this is allowed to go through, what's going to happen to the other parks?"
Petree, who's lived near Sequim for four years, worries that a disc golf course is another example of development overtaking Clallam's rural atmosphere.
"We don't have that many places we can ride.
"This is what we've got, and we don't want it taken away."
The McAleers don't want that either, but said they'd like Robin Hill to be a place where more people play.
"Not everybody can afford to be in the equestrian business," with the horse, the trailer and the truck to pull it, Mike said. "A disc costs $10."
Michael, meanwhile, said he's been accused of colluding with his father to slip the discs into the park.
"There's no conspiracy," he said, adding that since Sequim has no course, it's been years since he played the disc game.
"I have a new passion," Michael said: "regular golf."
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: July 01. 2008 9:00PM