The Northgate Golf course has been closed since January, 2009. Since then, the City of Reno has been looking at ways to make improvements to the area, now known as Sierra Vista Park. The City is still in the conceptual phase of this project and it could be about ten years before the final vision is complete. For now, they're still gathering ideas from the community. Today, the building that used to house the clubhouse is boarded up and has been the target of vandalism. But the goal is to transform the building into something that can generate revenue for the city.
"Some concession kind of use, whether it be for biking or other kind of use that would support the use of the park," Julee Conway, Directory of Parks, Recreation and Community Services said. "It could be a special events site, meaning it could be used for weddings."
The 206-acre park still has a few remnants left from when it was a golf course, but it's gone back to it's natural state, for the most part. Some nearby residents would like it to stay that way.
"One of the things they talked about was to keep it natural," Conway said. "They wanted to have pathways. They looked at how we potentially could have more community use of it as a whole."
Some of those options include an amphitheater and an archery range. Public parks and an art and nature loop are also part of the conceptual plan. A city ordinance says that 2% of new facilities must be used for art.
"The community embraced that and said, 'let's put it along the pathways,'" Conway said. "Let's put in artwork at the entrance."
Trail improvements will likely happen once funding is available. It will be a loop system with access from the neighborhoods. It will also be handicap accessible. No new decisions will be made at least until later this year.
"It really is a blank slate and the community has advised us and we agree with that, that it is a beautiful natural setting," Conway said.
There is no date set for when we could start to see things happen. The city probably won't start work on it until they have funding for both construction and maintenance.
