The war for East Potomac: Inside golf’s most heated battleground | News

WASHINGTON, DC – Judge Ana C. Reyes could help decide the future of the beloved DC muni, East Potomac Golf Linksbut decidedly not a golfer. “A good walk ruined,” is how Reyes jokingly describes the play, borrowing from a line often wrongly credited to Mark Twain.

Still, even a non-golfer could certainly appreciate the spectacular golf weather Monday brought to the nation’s capital: 60s, no clouds, just a hint of breeze — the kind of conditions that might tempt you to run from work to the course and play until the gloaming fades into darkness, as golfers did Monday at East Potomac.

We’ll get back to that joyous scene in a moment, but first, a pit stop on the 4th floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse, just around the corner from the Capitol Building and less than three miles north of East Potomac. Courtroom 12 is the domain of Judge Reyes, and if you are into legal meetings, there was no better place to be on Monday at 10 am.

It was the hour in which a single-room gallery rose to greet Reyes as he began the last hearing in the controversial case that, in theory, will decide the next steps for East Potomac Park, an artificial peninsula of 330 hectares that hosts, among other splendors of green spaces, jogging and cycling paths by the water, including a grove and three blue golf courses. Course, a Walter J. Travis design that dates back to the Gatsby era and can be played for less than 50 bucks.

To the bloated team of politicians (President Trump chief among them), bureaucrats and lawyers committed to seeing the park remodeled into a singular 18-hole golf course capable of hosting A-list tournaments, Reyes became an inconvenience. So much so that on Friday the Department of Justice requested that the 52-year-old native of Uruguay, who made headlines for reprimanding a government lawyer in a hearing on Monday of last week, recuse himself from the case for “violating the basic norms” that a judge remains impartial. President Trump, in a Social Truth post Monday morning, doubled down on Reyes’ rebuke, accusing: “The judge on the case is a crazy lunatic the court tapes will reveal, can he be crazy?”

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ALAS, REYES did not go down There she was, back on the bench on Monday, American flag to her right, witness stand to her left, Diet Coke never out of reach. If the government had hoped its request would have a deterrent effect on Reyes, it only seemed to embolden it further. As was the case in the hearing on October 12, Monday’s session – which included testimony, as ordered by Reyes, from the official of the Department of the Interior Gregory Wischer and the Director of the National Park Service Jessica Bowron – teemed with more jabs, sighs and scoldings from Reyes, and not only directed at the defense. Reyes, who controls his court like Scottie Scheffler makes a 7 iron, also reprimanded the main lawyer of the plaintiff, Abbe Lowell, for the tortuous questions.

Reyes’ continued exasperation with the government was largely fueled by its refusal to acknowledge that the Parks Department On October 10 felling of more than 400 trees on the Blue Course was motivated by the president’s vision for the site and not, as the DOJ claims, by a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report that included a series of renovation recommendations, including tree management, that would improve conditions in the three municipal courses of DC, East Potomac, Rock Creek and Langston. This distinction is important, because if the removal of the tree had not been authorized, the Department of the Interior was obliged to secure permits and approval of the court before starting the work.

Appearing to support the government’s argument that the tree work was not related to the renovation of the course, there were social posts from Sunday to Monday by the president in which he said that “the Department of the Interior, under the auspices of Secretary Doug Burgum, and in conjunction with the famous golf course architect, Tom Fazio, developed a plan to build a world-class golf course in the field of golf at the Eastern Golf Course, which could close the golf course on November 15 for a 15-month construction project. They do not need approval. Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY! ”

During Monday’s hearing, Reyes and Lowell, the plaintiffs’ attorney, struggled to square the defendants’ claim of still-undecided site plans with Trump’s much more urgent and specific messaging.

“Do I believe the President of the United States or do I believe you?” Reyes told the defense team, led by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Jr., the DOJ’s third official.

Reyes said later: “I have, on the one hand, the president of the United States telling the American public three times now, I think, in the last two days, there is a final plan to redesign the golf course. So I have everyone telling me and, you know, witnesses saying what they say, that there is no final plan. Who is it?”

Reyes never had a clear answer to a topic that has been of great interest not only to DC golfers, but also to local cyclists, joggers, walkers, fishermen and local picnickers, many of whom were alarmed by the last plan of the site, which shows the golf course under, among other public access assets, the road that delimits the perimeter of the peninsula. Among the onlookers in the courtroom Monday was a group of cyclists, a couple of whom had helmets strapped to their pockets and one of whom was dressed in a cycling jersey. In the row behind them was David Hearn, a three-time Olympic kayaker and noted Trump foilwho has been one of the most vocal supporters of the park.

Although Reyes has had little exposure to golf, he is well aware of the importance of East Potomac to the DC golf scene. Toward the end of the seven-hour trial, he told a defense attorney for the Department of the Interior proposed to do: “It’s not right a golf course design, advice.” The Blue Course, Reyes reminded the attorney, was one of the first public golf courses to be desegregated and is a protected historic landmark. “This is not just a putt-putt course,” Reyes said.

The hearing ended without a decision. Reyes said she was still considering whether to stop or reduce work on the course and, if so, to what extent.

The judge also used his closing remarks to reveal a disturbing result of his oversight of the case. “A federal judge is getting death threats on a golf course,” Reyes said. “I really think it’s not what the founders envisioned.”

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REYES ADJOURNS COURT just after 5 pm If you had zipped to East Potomac Golf Links at that time, you would have found a scene – in spirit, anyway – definitely more in accordance with what the founders of the park. had expected The sun melts on a half-full driving range. A girls golf team from a nearby high school gathers advice from their coach on a practice green. Players of all ages and abilities enjoy rounds on the three courses followed by cold drinks in white Adirondack chairs by the clubhouse.

Among the locals enjoying the idyllic evening was Brian Kelly, a retired journalist, who wore a Washington Senators hat over his forehead as he worked on his game on the range. “The value of this place is the cross-section of people who play here,” Kelly said after his practice session. “Kids, kids with their parents, old people like me who play on Tuesday mornings. The weekends are just packed. It’s a really important facility for DC”

None of this is to say that the East Potomac is perfect. The fairways are parched, the course has severe drainage issues and the fairways are cleared (although they are equipped with shot tracking technology). The place objectively needs love. As for the sycamores and willows lining the fairways, at least some East Po’ regulars agree that the property would benefit from removing some of them. “It’s not really a bad thing,” Kelly said of the trees that came down on Oct. 10, “because a lot of these trees shouldn’t be here.”

From a clubhouse standpoint, it’s hard to say any the work has been done. The downed trees don’t begin to come into focus until you reach the fairway above the right of the par-4 2nd hole, which was a focus of government work over the Columbus Day weekend. A massive amount of brush has been cleared from there, and dozens of trees — what Wischer, the director of the National Park Service, referred to Monday as “overgrown trees” — now lie in piles next to the sawed-off stumps. Further on the course, more tree work is evident, with larger oaks and maples lying horizontally along the fairways, their stumps exposed. “Not exactly specimen trees,” Wischer said in his testimony. “These weren’t trees like in your front yard.”

The problem in court, however, is not so much the removal of the trees, but rather the process by which the government carried out the work. “Questions abound,” Reyes said.

Chase Castle, an East Potomac regular who often stops to play the course after work, said Monday he had received a handful of messages from out-of-town friends asking about the president’s plans for the property. What does Castle tell him?

“I tell them it’s disgusting,” he said. “I hate it. It’s disappointing. It’s bad for golf. A lot less people will be able to use this in the future when it’s just a course.”

The plan also worries non-golfers like Konyka Dunson, a facilitator and leadership trainer, who was scribbling on a notepad on a table outside the clubhouse Monday night. Dunson said he has been coming to East Potomac Park for 25 years. She walks the park’s waterways and calls East Potomac her “sacred space.” Dunson said she struggled to wrap her head around the proposal for the site.

“It never occurred to me that the National Park Service doesn’t protect a national park,” he said. “And it’s not just this thing like, Oh, it’s just a golf course. It’s much more than that. People have picnics here. People have weddings. I see people praying here. You see people on bicycles. I’ve walked miles here. I’ve seen people even do celebrations of life and release balloons. You see all kinds of things. To remove something that means…”.

Dunson didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to.

“It’s unfathomable to think that this could actually happen,” he said. “I sincerely hope not.”

It was now dark, but the last of the golfers were still around. If you couldn’t see them, you could hear them, their clubs rattling in their bags as they walked off the range, past the lighted practice green and toward the parking lot. It had been a good day at East Potomac. Less clear is how many more days they will look and feel like this.