Featured photo: Corey Matthews playing at the Winston Lake Golf Course (photo by Jerry Cooper)

Revitalization efforts for Winston Lake Golf Course are underway, inching the historic playing field closer and closer to the 18th hole in a months-long process to renovate the course.

Located in Winston-Salem’s East Ward, the historic golf course opened in 1956 for Black golfers, who were once restricted to playing at the city-owned Reynolds Park Golf Course and private country clubs after courses had closed.

The site has long held historical significance in the community, and now it’s nationally recognized as such. In October, city councilmembers approved listing the golf course on the National Register of Historic Places; it was officially placed on the registry on Dec. 12.

In 2022, city officials signed off on using nearly $1.72 million for improvements to the course. 

One root of the course’s problem lies with its abundance of trees, so the city will spend $720,657 of the funding on tree removal.

The money was originally intended for smoothing fairways and adding grassy areas impacted by erosion and invasive vegetation, according to the city’s Recreation and Parks Director William Royston during a city council finance committee meeting on Aug. 12.

After several meetings with the golfing community and city staff, they decided to remove several trees that were impacting play, Royston explained.

The work will be completed in phases, according to Royston. They plan on closing nine holes, completing work on half of the course, and then moving on to the other nine holes.

The excessive tree cover has been causing limited visibility for golfers as well as drainage problems that negatively affect the health of the greens.

The upcoming work on the golf course comes after a course analysis by Richard Mandell, an “award-winning golf course architect” who also helped renovate Tanglewood Park’s championship course in Clemmons. Mandell was awarded $175,000 for design and construction oversight on the project. 

“The tree canopy around the golf course had not had any substantial maintenance over the past 30-40 years, and it was the No. 1 contributing factor to many of the aesthetic as well as the maintenance issues that we had to address there at the course,” Royston said.

City staff had originally expected to begin the work in the early spring, but a series of delays during the bidding process held up the work.

According to city records, close to 50 acres of trees will be removed as part of the city’s plan to improve the golf course. Ninety-eight will be individually removed as well.

Navian Sims and Avery Burch at Winston Lake Golf Course (photo by Jerry Cooper)

“I know you’re happy to see some of those trees moved out,” Mayor Allen Joines joked to Councilmember Robert C. Clark.

“Oh boy, I’ve hit at least that many,” Clark responded.

In total, the city plans on redesigning bunkers, tee box renovation and replacement, designing drainage and irrigation systems renovations, tree removal, fairway improvements and other miscellaneous improvements to the course. 

An evaluation panel of staff members from the Vegetation Management and Recreation and Parks departments, as well as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department, reviewed the proposals and selected W Brown Construction, LLC of East Bend, NC for the job.

As part of their work, W Brown Construction will clear and dispose of trees, stumps, roots, brush and shrubs.

The companies were selected via a scoring process with five categories. While W Brown Construction had the most points out of the five eligible companies, A1 Forestry was the only entity to receive any points in the Minority and/or Women-owned Business Enterprise commitment category. However, W Brown Construction scored the highest in terms of price and value. 

Mayor Pro Tempore DD Adams, who has been playing golf since the mid-1990s, has been advocating to revamp this course for years.

“I am so happy to see this, this has been a long journey,” she said during the Aug. 12 meeting.

When Adams plays golf at other municipalities’ courses, she said she notices a big difference between the improvements they’ve made on their courses compared to Winston-Salem’s.

“We haven’t done that,” she noted.

“I am hoping that this initiative will kick off us bringing the lake back to its greatness that it was when I first started playing almost 30 years ago,” she added.

All CityBeat reporting content is made possible by a grant from the NC Local News Lab Fund, available to republish for free by any news outlet who cares to use it. Learn More ↗

Republish this story 🞬

Republishing Content

All content created for the CityBeat— photos, illustrations and text — is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 license (CCA-ND).

These republishing rules DO NOT apply to all of our content. The CityBeat is a nonprofit-funded position that specifically reports on city council business in Winston-Salem and Greensboro.

You are free to republish all content from the CityBeat under the following conditions:

  • Please copy and paste an html tracking code into articles you post online, allowing us to access analytics on our work.
    It can be dropped onto the page right beneath the copyable content, available below.

    If your site is using Google Analytics already:

    <script>
    gtag('config', 'UA-49884744-1');
    gtag('event', 'page_view', {
        page_title: 'Winston-Salem to spend over $720,000 on tree removal at the historic Winston Lake Golf Course',
        page_location: 'https://triad-city-beat.com/winston-lake-golf-course-renovations/',
        send_to: 'UA-49884744-1'
    });
</script>

    If your site is not using Google Analytics: 

    <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-49884744-1"></script>
<script>
    window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
    function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
    gtag('js', new Date());
    gtag('config', 'UA-49884744-1');
    gtag('event', 'page_view', {
        page_title: 'Winston-Salem to spend over $720,000 on tree removal at the historic Winston Lake Golf Course',
        page_location: 'https://triad-city-beat.com/winston-lake-golf-course-renovations/',
        send_to: 'UA-49884744-1'
    });
</script>

  • Please use our bylines with attribution to Triad City Beat with a live link to our website: "by Gale Melcher/Triad City Beat"
  • At the bottom of the article (print or web) please include this text (links may be hyperlinked online):

    "Triad City Beat is an independent, for-profit news source serving the cities of the NC Piedmont Triad in Guilford and Forsyth counties, online at triad-city-beat.com.
    CityBeat content is funded by a grant from the NC Local News Lab Fund, online at nclocalnews.org."

  • If you have any questions, please contact Brian Clarey at [email protected]

Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.

We believe that reporting can save the world.

The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.

All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.

⚡ Join The Society ⚡