Their golf course is becoming a data center. But first, an emotional farewell 

Dauphin Highlands, a popular public golf course near Harrisburg, Pa., opened on Labor Day weekend in 1995. Tim Birney, now 77, was on the tee sheet that day. He still remembers being taken by the natural beauty of the Bill Love design, which sits on a pastoral 228-acre plot overlooking the Susquehanna River. 

“It looked like it’d been there forever,” Birney told me.

Perhaps, but it won’t be there forever.

Monday was Dauphin Highlands’ last day of operation, as the golf course prepares to make way for construction of a 400,000-square-foot, $10 billion data center. Many residents, especially golfers, were holding out hope that the day would never come, but it did — the result of the Dauphin County General Authority’s decision to sell the parcel to Texas-based data-center developer for $45 million. 

The authority has said the course was losing money and had accrued $13 million in debt; local officials also have said the deal will result in tens of millions of dollars worth of community benefits for the local township, including public safety and municipal infrastructure improvements.

The sacrifice: one fewer golf course for area golfers. 

Monday at Dauphin Highlands was part celebration, part funeral. More than 300 golfers flocked to the property for one final loop; some shared stories from cherished rounds past, while others grew emotional, as if they’d lost an old friend. 

Birney, who has been Dauphin Highlands’ director of instruction since 2012, was in the final group of the day, which meant he and his playing partners — Fred DeCock, who had played with Birney on that opening day in 1995, and Joe Navin — aimed at naked flagsticks; memento-hunters in the groups ahead of them had pocketed the flags. 

“That’s OK,” Birney joked. “I know where the greens are from my 30 years of playing here.” 

Birney knows the history of the place, too. Before it was a golf course, the land served as a corporate retreat for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, an employee getaway complete with river views and a clubhouse. But when the steel market collapsed, Birney said, Bethlehem Steel sold the land to the county. That was in 1992; three years later, the county converted the site into a golf course.

Birney doesn’t know exactly how many lessons he has doled out at Dauphin. “Thousands,” he said, many of which he counts among his fondest memories. “I run into people all the time who are like, ‘I got a lesson from you 10 or 15 years ago, and I remember the dollar bill in the sand,” a reference to one of Birney’s favorite drills in which he’d have his students practice bunker shots by trying to take a dollar-bill-sized divot.

The Dauphin pro shop on Tuesday told the sad story. Hundreds of now-moot scorecards filled a cardboard box on the floor. A lonesome hat sat on a table where once there had been dozens. The fitting bay was picked clean; same for the shelves, save for a few golf gloves on a rack beneath a “Buy 1 Get 1” sign. The homepage on the course’s website has been replaced by a graphic that reads in part: “The final putt may drop, but the friendships, traditions, and memories made here will live on.”

Some of those relationships were formed by way of the course’s lively clinics and leagues, available to men and women of all ages. The staff also was close. On Tuesday, the course organized a thank-you dinner for its employees, catered by a local Italian restaurant.

Construction of the data center isn’t scheduled to begin until next year but Birney said test drilling has already begun. That didn’t stop him and his friends from enjoying their last-licks round on Monday. When they arrived in the area by the 15th and 16th holes, Birney said they were greeted by a familiar sight: a flock of wild turkeys and a herd of deer, which were drawn there, Birney said, by an acorn-shedding oak tree. 

“We would see that every night,” Birney said. “I don’t know if these AI kids are gonna feed the deer and the wild turkeys. I don’t know where they’re going to go, because they’re taking away 240 acres of green space.” 

Among the tears that spilled Monday, some belonged to Birney, who said he welled up when talking by phone to his manager at Troon Golf, which oversees Dauphin Highlands. Birney’s message to his boss: “It’s been an honor and a privilege to work here.”

As Birney recounted the conversation, he choked up again. 

“It’s very upsetting,” he said.