CDGC Announcement – Interim Refinery Closure
Effective October 15th, 2020.
The Old Refinery disc golf course has been a very active file for the CDGC and City of Calgary Parks who manage the land. Those who have ventured into the park since it opened this last autumn would be aware of how fragile some areas of slower growth remain. Tall grasses need to mature and densify to get consistent re-seeding.
After many discussions with City ecologists and administration it was agreed that disc play at Refinery will be suspended until further review in September of 2021.
The Refinery process has lead to a much deeper relationship with City officials and I believe they sincerely wanted a showcase of disc golf, co-existing with a significant environmental remediation project. Regrettably we could not land on a workable balance between the need for some fairway carving and the need for the wild grasses to establish a few more years. The compromise is a plan to close the park during summer growth seasons and open it (after review) for autumn, winter, spring play, commencing the autumn of 2021.
Tomorrow, Oct 15th, Old Refinery will close and the City will once again be winter seeding the most fragile areas for germination in the spring. The tone poles will remain in place but the tonals and signage will be removed for now.
The capacity challenges for disc golf within our city remains. We hope to have more announcements on that shortly. In the meantime we once again have to thank the CDGC volunteers who gave a lot of their time in making Refinery happen. We knew it was a shaky short term project but the longer view for the land remains positive. It will be a beautiful place for disc golf, when the time is right.
Kelly Morstad – CDGC President
