The City of Leesville, Louisiana now boasts an 18-hole Leesville Mini Golf municipal course that was designed and constructed by Adventure Golf & Sports using their eco-friendly Modular Advantage® System.
According to Grant Bush, director of planning and development for the City of Leesville, the course was built on land that was once the site of the old city pool. “That pool was filled in a number of years ago,” says Bush, “and that’s what we’ve been planning to build on top of it.
“We see it as a profitable venture right now. We’ve hired our manager and our (other community) pools will be closing for the winter months, so some pool employees will move over to work the mini golf course. Spring and summer next year we’ll staff up.”
The mini golf course will be open Monday – Wednesday from 3 p.m. – 8 p.m., Friday 3 p.m. – 10 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. and Sunday 2 p.m. – 8 p.m. The course will be closed on Thursdays to accommodate private parties.
Leesville has never had a mini golf course before, since the nearby Fort Johnson military installation (formerly Fort Polk) has its own mini golf and go cart track that has been available to the public. However, as Bush notes: “It’s not that flexible just to go to Fort Johnson and go play golf or go play mini golf or anything. You’ve got to go through all these check stations and so forth. So it has a bit of barrier entry being a military installation.
“The idea for mini golf came up about 10 years ago. The Mayor and Northwestern State University had worked with a professor and came out with a four-theme type mini golf course. We did not get the chance to put in the themes we had drafted up, but we’re not finished with that…and the four themes we originally came up with a decade ago may still move forward.”
Bush says planning for the mini golf course began in earnest two and half years ago just before the COVID epidemic began that resulted in the shutdown of many public places. “We did an RFP and we searched out a number of different companies that we looked at submitting our RFP to and Adventure Golf & Sports was one that caught our eye.
“They (AGS) were good to work with and they kept their word…We were fortunate they were willing to work with us and come to west Louisiana during probably one of the hottest summers in a while and get this thing taken care of for us.”
The eco-friendly Modular Advantage Mini Golf System used by AGS to build the course features patented, interlocking, flexible panels made of recycled materials that are permeable for water drainage.
The course is ADA compliant with the look and feel of a concrete course but without the requirement for extensive excavating or the expense of pouring concrete.