Park Hill Golf Course Is Back in the News

Shuttered for four years, the land could soon have homes, not holes.

By Jon Rizzi

Snow and ice now cover the untended, overgrown fairways of Denver’s fabled Park Hill Golf Course. But in the not-too-distant future, the 155-acre property located at the northeast corner of Colorado Boulevard and East 35th Avenue could sprout 3,200 new housing units, retail locations and a grocery store.

The future hinges on an April 4 municipal election that would give voters the option to wipe out the legal agreement that proscribes most building on that green space.

As Joe Rubino reports in The Denver Post, the Denver City Council on Monday night voted 11 to 2 to refer the question of whether to the public.

“It’s going to be up to the people, not us,” said Councilman Kevin Flynn, a former Rocky Mountain News reporter who now represents Denver’s Southwest District.

The property currently exists in a conservation easement as the result of an ordinance passed in a citywide 2021 election. That ordinance requires a citywide election to remove the easement.

A pandemic-fueled spike in golf rounds coupled with a surge in population has created demand for both more public golf and more housing. And since more people don’t play golf than play it, the odds of Park Hill returning to its storied history are slim at best.

Learn more about the details of the ballot measure and plans for the land—should the voters elect to remove the easement, that is—click here and here.

Meanwhile, the course that opened in 1931 and hosted the star-studded Park Hill Invitational in the 1940s and ’50s remains fenced off and fallow.

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Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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