Carson City disc golf design process begins

An initial design session Wednesday on Carson City’s proposed disc golf course complex focused on where to locate parking and possible layouts for courses.

More than a dozen disc golf advocates and city staff members met first at the Carson City Community Center, then drove to the 100 acre site on the city’s east side selected last June by the Board of Supervisors. The site is bordered on the north by U.S. Highway 50 East and on the south and east by Flint Drive and Rifle Range Road. Park Planner Vern Krahn said it has “nice topography features” but requires decision making involving various options.

Despite interest from disc golf advocates in a centrally located parking area, Krahn said two city departments had weighed in with negative comments prior to the meeting regarding what was called Area 4 that’s roughly in the center of the hammer-shaped property. He said the Fire Department and Transportation Department objected in part due to access and road problems.

He also noted road improvements would be necessary to mitigate such access concerns, which would add an expense to the project.

Initial plans are to have two tournament grade courses and one beginners’ course, according to Krahn, but under questioning he said that could change. “Yes, we could go down if we need to,” he said, using as an example the possibility of one tournament level course and one for beginners. He said at this stage in the design process there’s flexibility.

The group after meeting at the center went to the site to work with a matrix on determining optimum parking and course possibilities, individually ranking such things as access, grading, noise aspects, visibility, safety, wind exposure and the like. Krahn said rankings would run from a best score of 5 to a worst of 1 with the matrix system meaning no one individual’s preferences could dominate the process.

Krahn said this was the first of perhaps three design meetings involving disc golf advocates and city staff. Efforts to develop a disc golf course complex for Carson City began in 2010 and gained traction in the past couple of years.

The site selected is on land recently turned over to the city by the Federal government. The land is in the vicinity of the city rifle range and dump west of the Lyon County line.