Golf course visioning plan moves ahead

By Cadence Chen chencade@grinnell.edu

Grinnell residents can expect an update on planned landscape improvements and new programming for the Grinnell College Golf Course (GCGC) in spring 2023. The visioning project is led by Monica Chavez-Silva, vice president of community engagement and strategic planning, and her team. With consultation from architects David Bagnoli of StudioMB and Jonathan Ceci of Jonathan Ceci Landscape Architects, and various community members, the project aims to create what the architects referred to as an ecosystem of social, financial and physical wellness.

Following initial conversations between Chavez-Silva and the architects in May 2022, Bagnoli and Ceci hosted 5 GCGC visioning workshops with over 250 attendees, from both the town and the College, to gather community opinions on how the 56-acre GCGC should be utilized and improved.

The hosts presented participants with poster boards that showed different visions and moods for the course — family resort, traditional, contemporary spa and prairie style. Participants could paste their opinions on the boards with sticky notes, and they were given opportunities to verbally share with the group their ideas and connections to the golf course.

Zoe Robinson `23, a member of the Grinnell College women’s golf team, attended the workshop that was held in the Club House with some of her friends. As someone interested in golf, she said she is like the course’s “little advertiser,” and informs others about the GCGC’s available resources.

“I’d really want more engagement between the community and the College because you can do so much with the golf course,” said Robinson.

With the help of the GCGC’s newsletters, she said she has noticed an increase in community events happening on the course compared to past years. Robinson said she was particularly interested in seeing a glow-in-the-dark mini golf event happen.

“The feedback from the workshops resoundingly revealed that people are looking for a place