Their golf course is turning into a knowledge middle. But first, an emotional farewell

Dauphin Highlands, a widespread public golf course close to Harrisburg, Pa., opened on Labor Day weekend in 1995. Tim Birney, now 77, was on the tee sheet that day. He still remembers being taken by the natural magnificence of the Bill Love design, which sits on a pastoral 228-acre plot overlooking the Susquehanna River. 

“It looked like it’d been there forever,” Birney informed me.

Perhaps, but it won’t be there perpetually.

Monday was Dauphin Highlands’ last day of operation, as the golf course prepares to make manner for construction of a 400,000-square-foot, $10 billion knowledge middle. Many residents, particularly golfers, were holding out hope that the day would never come, but it did — the consequence of the Dauphin County General Authority’s resolution to promote the parcel to Texas-based data-center developer for $45 million. 

The authority has said the course was shedding money and had accrued $13 million in debt; native officers also have said the deal will consequence in tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} value of group advantages for the native township, including public security and municipal infrastructure enhancements.

The sacrifice: one fewer golf course for space golfers. 

Monday at Dauphin Highlands was half celebration, half funeral. More than 300 golfers flocked to the property for one last loop; some shared tales from cherished rounds previous, while others grew emotional, as if they’d lost an previous good friend. 

Birney, who has been Dauphin Highlands’ director of instruction since 2012, was in the last group of the day, which meant he and his enjoying companions — Fred DeCock, who had performed with Birney on that opening day in 1995, and Joe Navin — aimed at bare flagsticks; memento-hunters in the teams forward of them had pocketed the flags. 

“That’s OK,” Birney joked. “I know where the greens are from my 30 years of playing here.” 

Birney knows the historical past of the place, too. Before it was a golf course, the land served as a company retreat for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, an worker getaway full with river views and a clubhouse. But when the metal market collapsed, Birney said, Bethlehem Steel offered the land to the county. That was in 1992; three years later, the county transformed the web site into a golf course.

Birney does not know precisely how many classes he has doled out at Dauphin. “Thousands,” he said, many of which he counts among his fondest recollections. “I run into people all the time who are like, ‘I got a lesson from you 10 or 15 years ago, and I remember the dollar bill in the sand,” a reference to one of Birney’s favourite drills in which he’d have his college students follow bunker photographs by attempting to take a dollar-bill-sized divot.

The Dauphin professional store on Tuesday informed the unhappy story. Hundreds of now-moot scorecards stuffed a cardboard box on the flooring. A lonesome hat sat on a desk where once there had been dozens. The becoming bay was picked clean; same for the cabinets, save for a few golf gloves on a rack beneath a “Buy 1 Get 1” signal. The homepage on the course’s web site has been changed by a graphic that reads in half: “The final putt may drop, but the friendships, traditions, and memories made here will live on.”

Some of those relationships were shaped by manner of the course’s energetic clinics and leagues, accessible to males and girls of all ages. The employees also was close. On Tuesday, the course organized a thank-you dinner for its workers, catered by a native Italian restaurant.

Construction of the knowledge middle is not scheduled to start until next 12 months but Birney said check drilling has already begun. That did not stop him and his pals from having fun with their last-licks spherical on Monday. When they arrived in the space by the fifteenth and sixteenth holes, Birney said they were greeted by a acquainted sight: a flock of wild turkeys and a herd of deer, which were drawn there, Birney said, by an acorn-shedding oak tree. 

“We would see that every night,” Birney said. “I don’t know if these AI kids are gonna feed the deer and the wild turkeys. I don’t know where they’re going to go, because they’re taking away 240 acres of green space.” 

Among the tears that spilled Monday, some belonged to Birney, who said he welled up when speaking by cellphone to his supervisor at Troon Golf, which oversees Dauphin Highlands. Birney’s message to his boss: “It’s been an honor and a privilege to work here.”

As Birney recounted the dialog, he choked up again. 

“It’s very upsetting,” he said.  

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