Developer to turn public course into shopping mall

Golf Course News, May 2003 by Overbeck, Andrew

CANTON, Conn. - Instead of re-opening this spring for its 72nd season, Canton Public Golf Course will be turned into a shopping mall. The $4.77 million deal closed March 31, five years after the Lowell family put the 130-acre, nine-hole course on the market. W/S Development of Chestnut Hill, Mass., started work on the site in April.

According to superintendent Heather Garvin, whose great-- grandfather and grandfather opened the course in 1932, the time had come to sell the property, which is in a developing area 12 miles west of Hartford.

"My Dad owns it with his two brothers and they knew they couldn't pass it on to the next generation," she said. "I am the fourth generation working here. It has been fun, but it is the way progress is going to go and it is part of life."

Garvin, who was recently named superintendent of the year by the Connecticut Association of Golf Course Superintendents, grew up on the first tee and started working at the course in 1985 after a brief career as a legal secretary. Her husband, Dana Garvin, is the assistant superintendent and mechanic at the course.

While the community will gain a shopping mall, and the town will enlarge its commercial tax base, a venue for learning the game of golf will disappear. "Juniors played free after 6 p.m. on Saturday nights and before 7:30 a.m. on Monday mornings," said Garvin. "It's a nice thing, it got kids playing golf."

When the Lowell family originally considered selling the property, they had hopes of keeping some of the golf course intact and preserving open space. However, the group of developers that were planning an outdoor health facility on the property couldn't get the funding together to make the project work.

However, as the once-rural area began to grow as a bedroom community for Hartford, the change was inevitable. "It is very busy now," said Garvin. "It's turned into a pretty affluent area.

While Garvin plans to stay in the golf business, she will spend this spring shutting down the golf course, helping her parents move off the property and auctioning off two barns full of antiques. After that, she said, she plans to "take the summer off for the first time in a long time."