ATHENS, Ohio — Ohio University closed its driving range in July — less than a year after the city of Athens spent over a quarter-million dollars on netting to comply with university requirements to use the soccer field beside the range.
After learning in June that the driving range would close, Athens Mayor Steve Patterson emailed his reaction: “You have got to be kidding me!!!”
“We could have saved a whole lot of money and now we have a freaking net for what, advertising or catching fish during flood events?” Patterson said.
The City of Athens spent over $273,000 on the netting at the Athens West State Park, the city Arts, Parks and Rec Director Katherine Ann Jordan told the Independent in an interview. Athens City Council authorized the expense in an ordinance that included funding for other improvements at the soccer field, which the city leases from OU, Jordan said.
The funding came largely from Arts, Parks and Rec Income Tax Fund, which Jordan said is supported by a tax levy and used by her department for special projects.
The city worked for years to lease the soccer field from OU. When the OU Board of Trustees approved the idea at its August 2022 meeting, it required the city to install netting between the driving range and soccer fields. The lease agreement was finalized in July 2024 and requires the city to upkeep netting to OU’s standards.
Ohio University Chief of Staff Carly Leatherwood told the Independent that the university required only “fencing,” referring to language from a 2022 permit she shared with the Independent.
“It was their choice to spend $300,000 on netting,” Leatherwood said.
However, in an interview with the Independent Patterson described the city as “going back and forth with the powers that be at the university side” to meet OU’s specific requirements for the space. Although the outcome was expensive, “We determined this is worth it to create new soccer fields where we had more space for a significant delegation of soccer players in Athens and in Athens County,” Patterson said.
Jordan said she isn’t sure what the city might have spent those funds on if the netting had not been installed.
“We would have used it for something else — to improve our parks or replace something big, if we needed it,” Jordan said.
In emails with the city and in an interview with the Independent, Leatherwood said OU’s decision to close its driving range was financial.
“Unfortunately, the range has operated at a loss for several years, and given our current fiscal realities, we’ve made the decision to close it permanently,” Leatherwood told city officials in an email.
Budget documentation Leatherwood shared with the Independent shows that the driving range brought in just under $25,000 in the most recent fiscal year, while expenditures totalled over $54,000. Overall, the university’s net loss on the range was just over $29,000.
The city has its own financial realities to contend with.
“The City of Athens’ taxpayers spent over a quarter million dollars to construct the net,” Athens City Service Director Andy Stone said in a June email to Leatherwood. “That is quite an investment for an unnecessary structure.”
Communication frustrations
Leatherwood told the Independent that the university had been “looking at all of our properties and trying to figure out where to place the student organizations and student athletes on our property” for “over a year now.” The fate of the driving range was part of those conversations, she said.
If that’s the case, the university began discussing the future of the driving range before the city began construction of the netting. Construction took place during October 2024, Jordan said.
The city wasn’t notified of the driving range closure until it received Leatherwood’s June email, Stone told the Independent. At that point, the decision was final.
“Had we known that OU was considering shutting down the driving range, we absolutely would have put a pause on the expense of putting up a $250,000 driving range net to separate the two fields,” Patterson told the Independent.
Stone said in an interview, “I wish they would have said, ‘Oh, wait, you know what, we’re thinking about not having the driving range there, and so hold off on building that big, expensive net’ — but they didn’t.”
Leatherwood told the Independent, “We have been very transparent with both City Council and the city, including Andy Stone and the mayor.”
Future of the driving range
Leatherwood told the Independent that the nets might still serve a function.
She said that OU is exploring various options for the site of the former driving range; the leading contender is to host a practice space for its track and field team’s javelin throwers. In that scenario, the university might open the field as a driving range when it is not being used for javelin.
OU is also considering “transferring the driving range business over to the city,” Leatherwood said.
In a June 6 email, Stone asked Leatherwood if OU was open to transferring the driving range to the city.
Stone and Jordan discussed that possibility in emails. Stone suggested Athens may be able to run the driving range profitably and meet ongoing demand for a driving range.
“That would hold off the clamoring for the dream soccer complex and also would make the net still necessary,” Stone said in his email to Jordan.
Jordan told the Independent the ‘dream soccer complex’ refers to a suggestion for an expanded soccer field at West State Park.
She replied to Stone, “This is interesting and something I will mull over. Of course, my first reaction is how in the world can APR take this on a move forward in a financially sustainable way, but I will think through this.”
As OU continues to weigh the future of its former driving range, both Stone and Jordan told the Independent the netting will remain in place.
“I do not intend to take it down … until we know for a fact that there’s absolutely not going to be a driving range there ever again,” Stone said.
High netting can pose a hazard to birds, which can become caught in the nets, though Jordan told the Independent the city has not had any such issues.
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