Meadowbrook Golf Club has an official plan in place allowing most of the course to reopen in summer 2017 with an improved layout, new driving range and landscape modifications that will make the course more resilient to future flooding.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) launched an extensive planning and community engagement process to determine Meadowbrook’s future after catastrophic flooding forced the course to close in June 2014. Potential solutions were identified and incorporated into three concept designs.
Out of the three concept designs, nearly 80 percent of 856 responses received from the community preferred “Concept B,” which was approved by the Board of Commissioners on September 2.
Concept B retains all of Meadowbrook’s 18 holes. The course layout is altered and new water features are created to help keep nine holes “higher and drier” in the event of another major flood. This is accomplished by raising high-value course features like tee boxes, bunkers and greens and diverting flood water into select areas containing rough and fairways.
The new Meadowbrook course will be shorter, but its layout improves play quality and it includes a new driving range, an important new source of revenue. In the future MPRB hopes to renovate the course clubhouse and complete upgrades to parking and maintenance areas.
MPRB is working with the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District to reshape Minnehaha Creek through Meadowbrook. The creek’s length will be increased within the course, decreasing the extent of local flooding and increasing the amount of natural vegetation and wildlife habitat.
Construction is scheduled to go out for bids in January 2016 and work begins as soon as weather will allow in spring 2016. The reshaping of Minnehaha Creek cannot begin until winter 2016-17, so three holes affected by the creek’s new path will not open until late summer/early fall 2017.
All other holes at Meadowbrook Golf Club are scheduled to reopen to golfers in summer 2017. Later this fall the Board of Commissioners is expected to consider a similar plan to improve Hiawatha Golf Club, which was also heavily impacted by the June 2014 flood.