UW-Green Bay Closes 90-Year-Old Golf Course, Making Way For Student Recreation Center | Wisconsin Public Radio
Shorewood Golf Course has closed after 90 years in Green Bay. And the news could mean big changes for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the surrounding community. The university announced this summer that it would close the 9-hole course, which is nestled into a corner of its Brown County campus. The area will become a student recreation and engagement center.
“Times change, and it just felt like the right time to be able to make this decision,” said Chancellor Michael Alexander.Shorewood has been losing money for years, and very few students used the course, he explained. There’s no shortage of golf courses in Brown County, and the extra space opens up new opportunities for the university, Alexander said.
The former golf course will become a hub for outdoor recreation—something students say they want more access to, he said. Once maintenance staff stopped mowing the course, a rare “oak savanna” began to emerge, Alexander said. “So that falls in line with our environmental mission and the ecological work that we do,” he said. “It also gives us an opportunity to maybe refocus where the trailheads are for our arboretum and provide more access to the community for that.”
The Cofrin Memorial Arboretum encompasses nearly 300 acres surrounding UW-Green Bay’s campus. There are plans to replace all the bridges on its trails, Alexander said. The university is always working to engage the local community, he said.
