DULUTH, Minn. (Northern News Now) – The City of Duluth has received a proposal about changing the Lester Park Golf Course into a more adaptive space.

The course was permanently closed after the 2023 golf season due to financial issues.

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The property is now boarded up and overgrown, but a nonprofit called Barrier Free Golf is showing interest.

Barrier Free Golf officials say their goal is to revamp the property and make the entire course accessible to people with disabilities, at no cost to residents or the city.

This would mean making all of the hills on the course a certain grade so that wheelchairs and accessible golf carts would have better access.

The project would be privately funded through grants and would move forward with big aspirations.

”The dream is that we build a golf course that could host the U.S. Adaptive Open and that would be really cool, but then the community also gets involved because you’re serving all of these people and it’s catchy,” said Barrier Free Golf board member Tim Andersen. “When they’re that happy and they’re that grateful, the whole energy of it is just fantastic.”

The city still needs to approve the project for it to be completed, but Andersen says they would need to fundraise about a million dollars before a few years of construction would happen.

Additionally, they hope to make the course available at a lower fee to local residents while visitors would pay more to play.

For more information about Barrier Free Golf and their past projects, click here.

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