Waugh, PGA Making Last Ditch Effort To Save West Palm Beach Muni

Tony Doris files an in-depth Palm Beach Post piece on PGA of America president Seth Waugh trying to get the city of West Palm Beach to not develop its shuttered muni.

With the city’s latest effort to nail down a redevelopment deal ending unsuccessfully, PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, a longtime Palm Beach County resident, has urged West Palm Beach leaders to let the organization restore the course, run programs there and still have it affordable for city residents, he said in an interview Monday night.

“The city has to make a fundamental choice,” he said: “Do we want this to be about real estate and finances or about golf? ... We just want it to be golf, not another development.”

A two year effort to find a savior for the golf course has failed, so Waugh has offered to get the PGA involved along with instructor Mike McGetrick and investors. It would seem a no-brainer given this:

Former City Commissioner Shanon Materio, now president of the South End Neighborhood Association, said Wednesday the city should acknowledge that the site was given to the city on the grounds it remain a golf course.

“For over five years, the golf course has remained in disrepair while the prior and current city administrations failed to complete the most basic of reviews by issuing a legal opinion regarding the question, can anything other than a golf course even be allowed on the property,” she said.

“The land was given to the city for a single purpose, a municipal golf course. Not for housing, not for hotels, and not even as a city asset.”

If the city fails to honor that restriction, it could lose the property, under the terms of a reverter clause, she said.