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Guest Opinion | Tim Brick: Miniature Golf Doesn’t Belong in the Arroyo Seco

Published on Monday, February 13, 2023 | 4:00 am
 

When the sun starts going down at 4:30 p.m. on each New Year’s Day, all the fans in the Rose Bowl and millions of television viewers around the world are treated to the stunning splendor of the Arroyo Seco and the San Gabriel Mountains framing it. 

That’s the reason why this hundred-year-old stadium has been able to survive and almost thrive in an age when other sports arenas are packed with trendy restaurants, souvenir shops, lavish corporate boxes, and far more comfortable seats. 

The Arroyo Seco is Pasadena’s gem, the natural feature that boldly says “Happy New Year” to a world shivering in the cold. 

But the natural character of the Arroyo has been eaten away since the time when President Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed, “This Arroyo would make one of the greatest parks in the world” and urged Mayor Earley to “just leave it as is” in 1911. 

But how have we treated the Arroyo Seco, which has contributed so much to our region, since then? We have wrung the water and wildlife out of it. 

We have dammed it and paved it. We even built a freeway through it. We have contaminated it with toxic chemicals that have knocked out most of the local wells. The fish and frogs that frolicked in the Arroyo are gone. The alders and willows have been replaced by parking lots. We’ve buried the stream in a concrete tomb that robs the severely declining Raymond Groundwater Basin beneath, Nature has been pushed aside by 36 holes of golf, roads, parking lots and recreational facilities. There was little or no environmental assessment done when all this clutter was developed many decades ago. No one thought much about water conservation or considered whether the steelhead were important to the community’s sense of place and well-being. 

That was before the California Environmental Quality Act over fifty years ago. And when the planners started environmental assessments, they assumed the current state of degradation as the baseline, ever sliding to further deterioration. 

Don’t think the Rose Bowl Operating Company is seeking alternative sources of revenue because of the overwhelming popularity of golf and miniature golf. 

Quite the contrary. In addition to the environmental detriments, this mini-golf course will most probably just add to the financial nightmares that now face Brookside Golf Course and the Rose Bowl itself. It amounts to “throwing good money after bad.” 

Times change. Pasadena now needs to plan how to deal with the ominous effects of climate change, and the restoration of natural systems is a key part of that. Restoring the Arroyo Seco stream and canyon is a major solution to dealing positively with the impacts of climate change. 

The site of the miniature golf course and much of the rest of the former and future floodplain also will be severely impacted by the increasing drought periods and the larger and more erratic floods that will occur. The flood channel is past its useful life and lacks the capacity to deal with these challenges. Pasadena needs to respond to them by restoring the natural hydrology and character of the Arroyo Seco and its watershed as much as possible, not by junking it up with plush lawns, parking lots and gaudy structures.

This project would also be detrimental to the biodiversity and open space goals of the state of California as found in the 30X30 program, which aims to accelerate the conservation of California’s nature, of which the Arroyo Seco is one of the greatest highlights.

It is shameful that the Rose Bowl planners have lost their sense of place. It is deplorable that the Arroyo Seco Foundation and other community stakeholders have been kept in the dark about the mini golf project and its impacts. It reflects the abandonment of any concept of the stewardship of natural resources, a dangerous omen in an era of climate instability.

Any efforts to minimize the environmental impact of the mini-golf course would just be bandages on a cancerous project. Greenwashing is counterproductive to Pasadena’s urgent need for sustainability and resilience. 

The Arroyo Seco doesn’t need miniature pseudo-solutions. Miniature golf doesn’t belong in the natural treasure the world knows as the Arroyo Seco.

Tim Brick is the Managing Director of the Arroyo Seco which is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the Arroyo Seco and other local watersheds.

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