Cobbs Creek Rising: Headwaters to Horizons | Episode 1 | GolfPass
a piece of land is much like us. A living, breathing force pulsing with energy and endless possibility cradling echoes of history deep within its soil. Charlie Cifford, the first African-Amean EG8 player, weathering storms. It looks rough out there and with time is often. Over the years, it fell into disrepair, forgotten, but never truly broken. Like us, land can heal, drawing wisdom from its roots to rise a new, harnessing purpose to shape its fate and laying the foundation for a legacy yet to rise. Well, for years a historic golf course in West Philly has been falling apart, and the goal is to restore it to its former glory. The Cops Creek Foundation is overseeing this project. Tomorrow is the official groundbreaking. It’s been a long time come. We’re pretty excited about it. 3 2 1. The ceremony kicks off a $100 million renovation. Bob Creek will be state-of-the-art 18hole championship course, 9-hole short restaurant, and TGR Learning Lab. with an investment from Golf Pro Tigerwood TGR Foundation. This year we’re we’ll begin the creek restoration. The course is expected to bring an economic boost and create 150 new jobs. Construction is scheduled to begin this spring. Right now, we don’t have a home course. We’re so excited about the golf course getting started again. Tea time in 2024. Tea time in 2024. So good to have it back. A strategy for restoring a golf course. That was a brilliant vision. But a vision requires the kind of work that a team of intellectually trained engineers, architects, planners, interior designers, and vendors to make that story really come to life. This is a map of the property and I use this to show people the absolute scale of the project because it is massive. It’s a 350 acre parcel of Fairmont Park. I first played Cobbs Creek when I was 13year-old freshman. I’m now 70 years old, so do the math on that one. Um, Chris Lang, a ninetime major winner, is a Hall of Fame member. Hey everybody, great to have you guys. I’ve wonderfully had the opportunity to be in this community for over 25 years, bringing in volunteers, volunteering personally, very deeply embedded in the schools, the nonprofits in the area. My grandfather turned a farm that he had in South Carolina into a nine-hole golf course. When you talk about the history of here and how it’s helped people of color and race and ethnicities overcome and break through, it was something that was hard to not get excited about. A West Philadelphia golf course. It’s making sure Charlie Sippford’s legacy lives on. I first played here in 78. There was one guy here who played cross-handed. You couldn’t beat. I didn’t play for a lot of money. I didn’t have a lot of money. my dad, he played COBS for a lot of years throughout his life. So, I want to bring it back and revitalize it in his memory. And for everyone who loves Cops Creek and you I’ve never played Cops Creek, but I think the the mission of a golf course certainly has to be to serve its citizens in a way that makes their life better. So I think Cops Creek is kind of similar to Philadelphia in that respect. The vision is a broad document. We had to break it into the pieces. And when you do that, you see we’ve got a lot of work left to do. Border for Philadelphia is ironically Cobb’s Creek. Part of our responsibility to the city, we agreed to become a reservoir, if you will, to protect the community from what happens when a stream starts to deteriorate. And right here is the TGR learning lab. just the state of education in Philadelphia, the teachers being overwhelmed, underresourced in the classrooms. It’s an underserved community is an area that really needs people to just give it a chance. So, the TGR learning lab is a place where kids are going to come and have access to state-of-the-art technology in an amazing environment. And we’re starting to design the driving range and the golf courses with these green sites. The economics is undeniable. We will have a professional tournament here and people coming here and having a good time and playing golf and have recreational activities, hitting balls on the driving range, eating in the restaurant. We all know that you’re going to put 100 million plus into the city of Philadelphia. Once we fully implement our unique model, Cobbs Creek will be in the conversation with America’s greatest municipal golf courses who have gone through their own successful restorations since the 1990s. Those stories have really inspired us. Our mission is to positively impact communities and change lives through municipal golf. In Washington DC, National Links Trust has taken over three golf courses and they’re all part of America’s national park system. They have incredible plans to transform them. If anything, what we’re doing is really a testament that golf is more than recreation. It can be a driver for positive change. It’s a driver for economic stimulus within a community. There’s just all these different components to it. So, it’s sort of like the ultimate challenge. And what challenges have you encountered so far? How much time do we have? Every obstacle you can imagine in a golf course we have on one site. There’s no irrigation out here. There’s no power out here. There was no power here. Was nothing. The course suffered from years and years of neglect and structural and safety concerns before closing in 2020. It was a heartbreaking moment to see it go into a liability for the city of Philadelphia instead of the asset it once was. We have a lot of complication with multiple jurisdictions between the city agencies, the federal agencies and the state agencies. Getting alignment with everybody that has to approve things. The Cobbs Creek Foundation is not replacing the public health and environmental value of the trees are cutting down. We’re standing right here now where there was a clubhouse. We’re in a trailer right now and it burned down about 10 years ago. This is how it looks after an overnight fire destroyed the building. And so whatever information that they had or any archives, they were all lost. So we really are starting from scratch. If you understand the history of the land and the importance of bringing the land and the golf course back to life. It’s really eye opening. You see a lot of these benches out here and we’re not sure exactly how old they are, but we’re pretty sure they come back from the beginning. And what happened here throughout history transforms this place to an icon at a different level for this city and this community. And I think the game first time I was here, there was just something about the golf course. It It seemed as though it had been great at one time. deep deep legacy. It was special. At this time, Philadelphia was playing other cities in golf and basically getting their butts kicked. The thought was there was no real great golf course in Philadelphia that could help to foster uh great golfers. Greatest architects in golf at that time were building some of the most famous golf courses that still stand today, but all private. So there was a committee first put together by Golf Association of Philadelphia to build this golf course built with the idea that it was going to be for the common man which is what actually transpired starting in 1916 when it opened. This was the place where men and women of all backgrounds got together and played golf. There was just never the restrictions there were in other cities. Women could play Cobs Creek before they were allowed to vote. It was public golf. It was to grow the game. Hosting one of the major championships at the time in this country, the USGA Pub Links in 1928. It became Philadelphia’s golf course. Philadelphia has a unique history. It’s the birthplace of freedom. This site is connected to that. The people that were there playing golf in the 30s and 40s uh really paved the way to break the color barrier. We have early stories in African-American newspapers saying, “Hey, there’s this place in Philadelphia where black and white people are playing together. It’s really sort of the home of black golf, especially from a professional perspective.” Charlie Cifford, the first African-Amean to play and win on the PGA Tour. He sees a black man getting on a bus with a bag of golf clubs and he says, “Where you going?” He said, “I’m going to Cops Creek.” He called this his home golf course. Howard Wheeler. Wheeler won six African-American National Championships. Cops Creek. It’s the great. It was a place where they could be free and they were accepted to play golf where, you know, no one else would accept them. I wouldn’t be in my role if there wasn’t for Charlie Cifford and those guys. Cobbs Creek is one of seven golf courses in the Black Golf Hall of Fame. There’s probably no better representation of public golf in the United States than Cops Creek. After 1940, things changed because the Soviet threat was worldwide. In the 1950s during the Cold War, the US Army was looking for a place where they could locate an air defense system and they ended up taking about 15% of the old course out in the far northwest corner. Right here on this property, they put four silos that had missiles and they put barracks where people lived for about a 4-year period. that led to a constricting and narrowing rerouting of the golf course that affected six holes adversely that hurt the golf course. It fell into disrepair, flooded, started a 50 to 60 year period of neglect. You have to close the course was just losing steam. Heartbreaking. 16 years downhill. Folks that started out with Cops Creek, they’ve kind of, you know, moved on to their lives until some research was done that changed everything. That’s really where it begins. I am at Cobbs Creek with Joe Bosch of the Bosch collection and chemistry professor and Mike Serba. So Mike and Joe, they started the Friends of Cobs Creek and really delved into the history. You know, this was the original first hole, will continue to be the original first hole. Um, in the tournament configuration that they have as a composite course, though, it’s number five. I don’t I don’t want to say they’re golf nerds. Um, in 2007, I had begun to start taking photographs of golf courses and posting a lot of those on a website called Golf Club Atlas. And that’s basically where Mike and I met. And Cobbs wasn’t in particularly good shape then. You see where the main creek runs, this has always been a problematic area for water. Joe went off on a mission to really learn what happened here. And uh yeah, I learned how awesome librarians are. I sent to the Hegley Museum an email to see whether they had any aerials of Cobbs. One day it appears I’ve got aerial photographs from the 1920s and 1930s. And what was astounding was that although it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, one thing that appeared evident was that all the green sites that I knew that are here today were there then. So whatever had happened to the golf course, it looks like if somebody was really inclined, they could recover the original golf course. We were very, you know, young and naive and and thought like, “Oh, gez, if somebody just takes a couple million dollars in that time, a friend of mine, Peter Hill, got the city to agree to lease Cobs Creek for one year. He morphed that into a 10-year lease. Then he put me in touch with the friends of cops. Chris had gotten a copy of the book that we put together that told the story of Cobbs Creek that turned into like, you know, a 400page paperweight. They had the original pre-1950 plan of the U Wilson layout and it has a beautiful sort of architectural heritage. The number of people that were in place to make this happen. There was always the legend that Hugh Wilson was the architect of the golf course, but it was clearly this murderer’s row of local architects who were all involved in a committee who were motivated to build this golf course. And it was built with the idea that it was going to be a super challenging course. And when I learned that the course got altered and I saw the routing of the original, it turned a light bulb on for me. Chris, his words said, “We got to do this.” All turned into The Cobs Creek Foundation. The purpose for our foundation is using 100% of the excess revenues generated from the golf course operations to fund educational and community program. Okay. We’re going to restore this. How do we get something in the ground? Gil Hans and Jim Wagner. My name is uh Jim Wagner. Uh uh G YM likeium. Jim Wagner is considered to be the best shaper in the business. He did every bunker at Aronomic. He did every bunker at Marian. What do I do for a living? I guess I uh drive a bulldozer and an excavator for a living. Just happen to be on golf courses. Golf course restored by Gil Hance. This is some body of work. He was at that time not Gilhance world famous architect. He was at the time Gil Hance local Philadelphia architect. The one thing we learned early on here was that when they would have flooding issues, Gil would come out here on his tractor and rebuild those grains. Just pro bono. We also knew Jim a little bit. Jim is not a glass half empty or half full guy. Jim’s a show me there’s a glass guy. And we knew if we took him out here and we walked him around the original routing, he would give us his honest appraisal. What we didn’t know at the time is Jim had played high school golf here. As we walked him around the Jim was very quiet, unnervingly quiet, got out to about the original sixth hole and we’re walking up the hill and Jim turns he says, “This is a little like 18 at Riviera.” I thought, “Okay, that can’t be too bad.” Well, I finally can’t take it anymore. I said, “Jim, are we crazy? Like, what? Like, give me something.” There’s another uneasy pause. He says, Nah, you guys aren’t crazy. Okay. They built a golf course in Brazil for the Olympics. They’ve restored golf courses all over the country. He has told me this is the most challenging project they’ve ever seen. We used to go talk to people and they thought we were crazy. They would look, you could just see it in their eyes. They might not say it, but we’re like, they’re like, “You’re going to do what at Cobs Creek? We were contacted in 2010 for 15 years. 15 years and we’ve been through everything. And there’s a lot of good that’s happening, but along with a lot of that good also requires a lot of work. in order to bring that good to light. Every golf property has its challenges. There’s always one, maybe two. Cobs Creek has about 10, but 11 if you want to count the city of Philadelphia as part of it. The oversight on the creek restoration has been problematic above and beyond what is normal any place else and it’s delayed everything. And every time you talk about, hey, how come the budget and how much money you need to raise keeps going up and up, it’s because the the the goalposts have changed. We’re not just restoring a bunch of fairways and bunkers and greens. We’re building major buildings on the site. That’s a $30 million building at the learning lab. It’s a $30 million building with the driving range. We still have the maintenance building, cart barn, small clubhouse to be built. All of a sudden, you’re ready to start. And then somebody comes back and said, “No, no, no. You need an additional round of engineering in order to get where you’re going. You lose 18 months.” And the creek restoration is a whole that’s a huge piece of it that people don’t understand. The reason why the golf course ended up closing is that the environmental conditions have changed upstream. The water goes someplace. It’s ending up down on Cob’s Creek. So these great holes that were built along the creek itself, every time it rains gets washed out. And when a stream starts to fall apart that affect other communities, then it’s not a resource to anybody. We agreed to fix that for the city. And you got to create wetlands. You’re talking about habitat, flora, animals. And to do that, you don’t let the stream function the way it is today. You have to rebuild it so it functions the way it did 600 years ago. In the creek restoration, we will lower the base elevation of the creek and then we’ll create up to 25 acres of wetlands further down. Basically, what you do is you dig, we’ll put some sticks inside there. We’ll put some more dirt on top of it, kind of create a sponge effect and give the water somewhere to go. It’s the largest mega urban creek and wetlands restoration in the country. The stream is the heart of the project, but to work on the heart, you have to get everything else ready. I needed to get in alignment with the federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and then more importantly the local jurisdictions of which we have two, the county of Philadelphia city and Delo, Delaware County, because the stream, like the story says, runs through it. Don has worked on Citizens Bank Park and Metife Stadium and he says that the Cobs Creek project requires more permitting than both of those projects put together. It’s literally taken us close to 3 years to get the permitting. The creek is a huge gamecher and we’re on the precipice now of beginning that um challenges change honestly on a day-to-day basis. The renovation of the historic Cobs Creek golf course is causing controversy. Some neighbors say the multi-million dollar makeover is going too far. Here we are doing a lot of things for the city of Philadelphia, for the youth of Philadelphia, for the neighborhoods and the community around, but um there’s a lot of things that we don’t know are going to happen. Uh good morning folks because of the um issue relating the significant testimony on um 18. Uh we will hopefully try to get everyone in in their testimony. If we’re ready, we’re going to get started. Commenting on 220918. Hello. Thank you. Afternoon. The Cobbs Creek Foundation is not replacing the public health and environmental value of the trees are cutting down. How will they prevent erosion, landslides, and sediment pollution in our waterways after they cut down the trees whose roots literally hold the earth in place? I am opposed to it because when people from outside the city come in the city, they are able to get the monies needed and the support needed for their projects. This land is valued at $90 million and they lease it for $1 for 70 years. Clearly, things are severely out of balance. The burden of proof is on the developer to show that their plans will not harm these communities. So far, the developer has failed to meet this burden. These golf course people don’t live in our community. We ain’t never got $6 million for nothing we tried to do. We’ve been cut out from the economics since I was their age. Before I was their age. When they going to spend $6 million on them? They cut down our trees and they put up a golfing course. This is going to benefit wealthy outsiders more than it will benefit the residents of Philadelphia. Thank you. I live right down the street from this community. They want to come in here. Golf is for rich people. Is it free? I want to know if it’s free cuz I want to sign up right now. This bill is bad for Philadelphia. So, I’m asking council to reject this bill in its current form. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you very much. That concludes our public comment session for today. Question now, shall the bill pass finally? And Mr. Decker, please call the role. Councilwoman Bass, I. Councilwoman Brooks, I, Councilman Driscoll, I. I’m in support of Bill 220918. Councilwoman Gardier, I. Councilwoman Yilmore Richardson. I because of the relationships that have been built with my students through the Cobs Creek Foundation community. Councilman Harry. I Councilman Johnson. Hi. We need to do what is best for children, not what is best for adults. Councilman Jones. Hi. Councilwoman Lozada. I I am here to support the Cobs Creek golf course. Councilman O. Hi, Councilman O’Neal. Hi. Some trees have been cut down, Mr. chairman. And so, uh, they will be replanting 1,500 trees. Councilman Phillips I, and 15,000 native plants back on this property. Councilman Squila, I. Recently, seven amendments were added to the bill. Um, and we are they’re all environmental amendments that were required from talking to the neighbors and things that they wanted and we agreed to all seven of those amendments uh to the bill. Thank you for your time, Councilman Thomas. I Councilwoman Vaughn I Council President Clark I are 16 and A zero majority of all members present voting in the affirmative the bill passes. I don’t think I’ve ever been around a group of people that have handled pressure better than this group. Yeah, we’ve come a long way and there are so many challenges in front of us that we have overcome. We’re starting to design and shape the driving range and the golf courses. The short course is finished and the learning lab’s almost done. We’re going to walk around. I don’t want to get the mud on this turf. We’re going to go this way. Wipe your feet on this grass. Course is probably going to get some big tournaments, not just local tournaments, maybe something much bigger than that. And that’s going to be outstanding. But the legacy of this course is going to be what the Tiger Woods Learning Center is doing. I’m 100%. 100. We got 100% people and what Meredith and Maria have already been doing for the last two years. That’s the true story of what’s happening here. Community, it’s a Philly thing. Philly is a big small town. Each neighborhood in Philly has its own flavor and its own culture. Yeah, red hot. Come on in. Get a New York City with restaurants. Afternoon, bread heads. Come on down. Get a cheese steak and sports teams. But you get your neighborhood, too. You had South Philly, West Philly. Now, personally, I’m West Cob Creek. Thank you, sir. There’s a lot going on in this community that has never been acknowledged or brought to the surface. Where we’re located geographically is what I consider the forgotten corner of the city. There are not a ton of spaces for children to come after school hours on summer on weekends at night. We’re always looking for things to do and usually we have to drive to other communities to find those things. the lack of resources there are for basic things, food, housing, education. The math proficiency rate is 2 to 12% in literally the eight surrounding elementary schools. It’s our mission as a PGA Tour to leave the communities that we play in better than we found them. That’s what I love about Cops Creek. The impact of this learning lab on this community is going to be transformational. Kids are super excited about rocketry, about circuitry, biio medicine. We have podcasting and music recording offering pathways of success in all areas of life, resume building, interview skills, how to invest, how to plan for the future. It’s all hands-on. It’s real time. It’s going to prepare them in order to compete and be successful. This is a total package moment. These educational opportunities are all free to students and their families. They’re hoping to serve about 4,500 kids annually and we knew that we needed an education partner from very early on. Even though it was really hard to get to Tiger, once he heard about it, it was a pretty quick yes. We started talking about how Cobs Creek is the home course of Charlie Cifford. And it so happens that To me, he was Grandpa Charlie. Uh, you know, I I named my son after Charlie. He meant that much to me and my family. My dad would never have been able to play the game of golf. He would never taken it up. I’d like everyone who knows who Jackie Robinson is to know who Charlie Clifford is one day. He was a guy with talent and a work ethic, okay? And what he needed was an opportunity like kids do. And if there was no Cobbs Creek, he probably works at the Nabiscoco factory and raises his family. And you and I are not talking about him today, but there may be another Charlie Cifford or another Tiger Woods in one of these houses around here. And that’s the north star for me. that learning lab pumping out great kids like Charlie Cifford. He’s a kid from Philly, former football player. Never thought I’d end up in golf. Cifford and everyone after him, Lee Elder, all those guys paved the way for me to be where I am today. Our kids are dreaming about this building being open. We’ve been around for 4 years here. What we’re hearing is that it’s going to be the demand is going to outstrip the our ability to serve the kids. Do you think it’ll happen? You guys, welcome. So glad you’re here. Hello, everybody. Great to have you guys here. All right, it’s cold out here. You guys ready for the best day of your life? All right. This is about how golf gives back. Check it out. What do we see out there? A driving. It’s in its DNA. Literally from West Philly to South Philly to upper Derby. All our hopes that we would draw from a wide range of folks, it happened. There’s nothing like this in the city. This unbelievable facility is so magical. Thank you. That was awesome. We’ve come a long way from the beginning. The core people who have gotten this started are all Philadelphiaians who want to make Philadelphia better. When you see what they’re building and they’re uh developing here, what comes to mind and what do you think about it? And what do you think it’ll mean for Philadelphia? Yes, ma’am. Philadelphia is often seen as a unsafe place. And I feel like if you start to come here and you start to see the good things that can happen here, you can see the safe image of Philadelphia. A new way for people from Philadelphia to present theirelves. There’s not many like golf courses you could just go to as like a kid in Philadelphia. So yeah. How powerful is this? You a new way of Philadelphiaians thinking about themselves. Powerful. in its final fully realized form. How good could it be? I will say this, I think it could be number three in the greater Philadelphia area. Could be. That’s behind Marian and that’s behind Pine Valley. It’s going to be a worldclass facility, one of the top 10 municipal golf courses in the country. Ever since the beginning, we’ve had the goal of building the best. Philly deserves the best. So, I won’t say number one, but our goal is to be one of the top three public courses in the country. It would be important to have a PJ tour event here. Okay. Another feather in the cap of Philadelphia, crowning a PGA Tour winner at Cops Creek. That would be my dream. So, you all think we need to be trying to invest in this? When this goes on TV in a golf tournament, I want them to think of two words. That’s our identity. like Harding Heart, East Lake, Tory Pines, Cobbs Creek. Let me hear you all say one Billy. One, United City. A United City. All right, y’all. Sold. Right now you’re saying thus far you’ve raised 110 between the state uh and city investments along with the private investments. Specifically with the ask of you, we have $70 million left to finish it. We need to raise the rest of the money. Now is when we need the support from the city of Philadelphia. This will be the greatest investment the city ever made. So um this is what I want to say. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
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Long-neglected Cobbs Creek Golf Course is the most ambitious municipal golf renovation project in history, bringing a world-class course, TGR Learning Lab and more to West Philadelphia. Presented by Lincoln Financial.
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