City leaders celebrate start of Beaver Meadow clubhouse construction

With crowdfunding towards a new clubhouse meeting its first milestone and a new snow gun on its way, a small crowd bubbled with optimism at the new Beaver Meadow Golf Course clubhouse groundbreaking Wednesday.

Cheryl Roy and Donna Reeder have been golfing at the city-owned course for years. Roy retired to Concord specifically and has been playing there since, while Reeder has begun playing a lot more since she retired last year.

Neither is fixated on a specific feature of the new clubhouse, whether it’s the bathroom upgrades, bigger dining area or expanded patio. They’re just eager to see a brand new facility.

“After unfortunate, slow progress,” Roy said, “now things come to fruition and we’re going to finally get a new clubhouse that everybody can enjoy.”

The roughly $6 million building got a green light from city leaders in June after a year of consternation over questions about the cost, the need and who should pay for it.

Over the next few years, the parking lot will be reconstructed and a new building will be assembled beside the current one, which will then be torn down. The design expands the concession and restaurant spaces, carves out dedicated spaces for indoor simulators, and caters to a year-round crowd with a gear room for cross-country skiers.

City officials spent more than a year deliberating over how big it should be, how much it should cost, and whether general taxpayers should foot the bill.

Jim Cilley, who leads the “Friends of the Beav,” a group founded this year to help fundraise for the project and support the course, is ready to focus on the positive.

“Our organization really was created to help Beaver Meadow and municipal golf,” in general, Cilley said. Support for their efforts, he said, will “go not only towards a building but hopefully will help change people’s lives.”

With a fall tournament, raffles, donated rounds of golf from other courses and a drive, chip, put competition, the group was able to raise the first $25,000 toward its commitment of $250,000 over ten years as its contribution toward the project. Further events are in the works for next year.

This winter a new snow gun, paid for by donations and a rebate from New Hampshire Saves, will create man-made snow at the course, providing a central loop that will stick around even if fluctuating winter temperatures melt away this year’s early natural snow.

Members of Ski the Beav, the group driving improvements to Nordic skiing at the course, turned out on Wednesday in support of the clubhouse, excited about the gear room and how a redux of the parking lot would allow water and power to run out onto the course for easy snow gun hookup.

Tensions over the clubhouse, which critics had argued was prioritized over other, incoming city projects used by a more diverse swath of city residents, have lingered in the months since its approval by the city council.

City Councilor Stacey Brown, of Ward 5, has scrutinized how the city’s reserve funds are managed – the recreation reserve in particular. Under the financing plan for the clubhouse, which was made public less than two weeks before it was approved, a combination of course revenue and money from the recreation reserve would cover debt on the clubhouse.

Brown has grilled city staff over why this was permitted when city rules dedicate that fund, created in 2016, towards the City Wide Community Center and its related costs.

Brown has been criticized both by fellow councilors and city administration for her line of questioning, and tensions bubbled over in a city council meeting Monday night. Mayor Byron Champlin cut Brown off from pressing members of the finance department over city financial reports and oversight of money coming out of reserves.

Both Champlin and Brown, as well as other city leaders, gathered Wednesday around the ceremonial ground-breaking dirt mound, which sat vibrantly brown atop the thin snowpack outside the 1967 building.

In remarks, Champlin described the clubhouse as a legacy project both for him and the city, brought to bear by councils past and present.

“This is a great day for the city of Concord,” he said. Very soon, he added, work on the parking lot would begin.

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