Johnson City hopes to sell portion of former Buffalo Valley Golf Course

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) – The City of Johnson City is looking to sell a portion of the property that formerly housed the Buffalo Valley Golf Course.

The 124-acre property on Golf Course Road has not seen anyone tee off since it closed in December 2017. However, Johnson City crews have maintained the site and kept it presentable since its closure.

Johnson City Assistant City Manager Steve Willis said maintaining the course has proven costly.

“We’re loading up equipment from our facilities here in Johnson City and transporting over,” Willis said. “It’s costing us probably $25,000 or $30,000 annually in labor just to keep the property in somewhat presentable shape.”

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Since its closure, Johnson City has done little with the property. Willis told News Channel 11 that other than maintaining it, harvesting some topsoil and conducting a study for a streambank project, the property has not been used.

Willis said while it would be ideal to sell the whole property in one piece, city leaders realize that the topography of the area could make that difficult.

“So it’s very likely that we may have to divide the property up in order to be successful in the sale,” Willis said.

The city is also looking to complete streambank mitigation at the former golf course and restore the waterways that were previously altered when the site was in operation. The city will not be selling the portion of the course (about 33.5 acres total) where the streambank mitigation work is planned.

According to Willis, the streambank project has been in the works for years, and final approval from FEMA is still pending before the city can start. Willis said completing that mitigation of the streams will result in the city earning credits for restoring the natural landscape, which can then be sold for taxpayer benefit.

“We would not be able to sell all those credits at one time,” Willis said. “It would probably be over a period of years, but it would enable Johnson City to recoup some of the initial investment that we made in the property back in 1993.”

Willis said the Town of Unicoi entered talks with the city about buying the property in 2023, but the town was not in a financial situation to do so at the time. Now, the city is looking for proposals from agencies to market and sell the property on the city’s behalf.

When asked whether the property could be eventually developed for residential or commercial uses, Willis said it was up in the air.

“From our perspective, obviously we want to be good neighbors and whatever would best fit in that part of the community would be ideal for us,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to speculate on what that might look like, but certainly there are sections of that property that would be very desirable for a residential-type community.”

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