Some very unhappy golfers in Split, as their course is under threat from plans from the city mayor.
“There is no alternative. The golf course will be at its current location, or there will be no golf course”, said on Thursday the leadership of the three golf clubs in Split which use 76,000 square metres of area at the mouth of the Žrnovnica river in Stobreč, after the Split mayor Ivo Baldasar announced that the valuable land will be offered to an investor to build a water park, and that the golf course will be moved to inland Dalmatia, somewhere around Sinj, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on October 15, 2015.
Outraged golfers have accused the mayor that he is trying to destroy an entire sport, although he does not have the support of any relevant institutions. “At the end of 2008, the city authorities gave this location to the Golf Vježbalište Stobreč-Split Association for the next ten years. Since then, for the last seven years, our members have invested more than ten million kuna with the help of various sponsors. All facilities have been legalized, and this is probably the only sports venue in Split which has all the necessary permits. However, in January of this year, Hrvatske Šume, without objection from the city authorities, have been registered as owner of the land on which the golf course is situated, which meant that the state has taken it over. However, Baldasar after that lobbied in Zagreb for a new tender to be announced, but this time in order to build a water park there. He has offered the location to Igor Štimac and Jozo Parčina who have asked him to find a plot for such facility. Although in Dugopolje, according to the county spatial plan, already exists a location for a water park which has all the permits, Baldasar is ignoring that fact and is trying to relocate us. Štimac and Parčina have since withdrawn from the project, together with the ‘mysterious’ foreign investor who was mentioned by the mayor, so it is a complete mystery to us why the mayor now wants to destroy us”, said Davor Matić, president of the Golf Vježbalište Stobreč-Split Association.
According to him, the city legal office sent a letter in mid-August in which it unlawfully terminated the concession contract for the golf course. “The concession agreement that we have signed provides for the possibility of unilateral termination by the City, under the condition that a new golf course is found, which has to be fully equipped.”
