Jan 21, 2017
A new way to save Muny—for a price
AUSTIN – The University of Texas (UT) is offering to extend its lease of Lions Municipal Golf Course to the City of Austin beyond 2019—provided that the city is willing to...
AUSTIN – The University of Texas (UT) is offering to extend its lease of Lions Municipal Golf Course to the City of Austin beyond 2019—provided that the city is willing to pony up lease payments that are closer to market value.
The board has long contemplated leasing the 141-acre course and other portions of the university-owned Brackenridge Tract in West Austin for a major commercial and residential development, with lease payments benefiting the Austin campus.
UT System regents voted in 2011 against renewing the city’s lease for Lions Municipal when it expires in 2019.
To be sure, much has changed since the 2011 vote.
Perhaps most notably, the National Park Service decided last year to add Muny to the National Register of Historic Places because of its significance in the civil rights movement.
Muny is considered one of the earliest municipal golf courses in the former Confederate states to be desegregated, if not the first.
UT, which prevailed last year in a U.S. Supreme Court case challenging its use of affirmative action in admissions, and its governing board couldn’t have relished the public-relations impact of bulldozing an important site in the civil rights movement.
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