Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors approved a plan Wednesday to turn the former Westpark Golf Course in Leesburg, Virginia, into a passive park, despite neighbors’ concerns about the inclusion of an 18-hold disc golf course.
The designs for the 134-former golf course, which closed in 2019, with the land being purchased by the county, will include three miles of trails and two pavilions, a restroom, as well as parking areas.
After the board’s finance committee was briefed on the project last month, nearby residents raised concerns about noise from the disc golf course.
During the public comment portion of Wednesday’s meeting, resident Karen Pantas repeatedly demonstrated the sound generated by a plastic disc hitting the basket chains that serve as a hole on a disc golf course.
“I bought a chain basket to see if my worries about noise were overblown,” said Pantas, striking the chains with the disc. “This is worse than I imagined.”
Pantas and other neighbors said Loudoun County has other disc golf courses in other parts of the county, but the proposed course would be located in a quiet, residential area.
“It is surrounded by people’s homes, their lives, their peace,” said Pantas. “I don’t want to have to live with this,” she said, as the chain basket jangled from being struck with the disc.
“This is an activity that is inherently noisy, shatters the quiet that wakes children from their naps, that frightens anxious dogs,” Pantas said. “It will be the ghost of Scrooge on every windy day.”
Leesburg District Supervisor Kristen Umstattd said new changes to the plans will help mitigate the noise, including ensuring that no basket is within 100 feet of a home, and that additional plant buffers will be built to muffle the sound.
Board Chair Phyllis Randall empathized with the neighbors, saying that in considering projects, “Sometimes my final decision is ‘would I want this at my house?’ And the answer is no.”
Despite enthusiasm for the park from board members and developers, “They don’t live there,” said Randall. “I don’t think we had one person living there that said yes.”
Still, Randall added a friendly amendment to the proposal, saying she would support Umstattd’s improvements: “Let’s see if we can get quieter baskets.”
Randall and other supervisors voted 8-0 to approve the project, including the disc golf course.
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