In the wake of the recent announcement Brisbane was a preferred site for the 2032 Olympic Games, the professional-grade golf course at Cannon Hill could be a potential Olympic venue.

The public golf course, off Creek Road, will be named Minnippi Golf Course after the local Jagera elder Tommy Minnippi, the “king of the Tingalpa tribe”.

The Minnippi Golf Course will open in mid-2022, about 12 months after the planned closure of the Victoria Park Golf Course before the first stage of its major transformation.

During a site visit on Wednesday, lord mayor Adrian Schrinner said the St Lucia public golf course would be able to cater for the golfers unable to use the Victoria Park course after it closed.

While the Minnippi course was to be funded primarily by developer BMD, Cr Schrinner said it would be open to the public.

“This golf course will be transferred across to Brisbane City Council on the day it’s completed and will become a public golf course,” he said.

He said work on the course was progressing well.

“A lot of the work is already done and we are already seeing the [fairway and tee] grasses being laid.”

Cr Schrinner said the Minnippi Golf Course was a potential Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games venue, given the sport was once again on the Olympic schedule.

“We don’t know yet whether golf will be part of the 2032 Games, but if it is, this is a good option and I know there will be plenty of people training here at Minnippi,” he said.

“It would be great to see a future Olympian here at Minnippi.”

The course had been planned since the late 1990s and had a controversial birth before the council agreed to a public-private partnership with BMD in 2014.

That agreement meant the 74-hectare course would be provided to Brisbane at no expense to ratepayers, while BMD was allowed to develop about 13 hectares of the 125-hectare site as a residential estate.

More than 30 hectares was set aside as a long-term squirrel glider rehabilitation zone after a viable population was identified by conservationists. Seventy gliders were identified in 2010, with the population dropping to about 30 last year, where it had stabilised.

BMD general manager Scott Power said about 80 per cent of work on the fairways for holes 10, 11, 12, 13 and 17 was done.

The layout included a 489-metre 13th-hole fairway. Greens will be planted last, from seed, in the final stage.

The golf course will return two water bodies that were once connected to the Bulimba Creek to the network.

“We’ve now started to mulch the conservation areas and we are starting to put in the tree tube stock,” Mr Power said.

“A lot of work has gone into enhancing the environmental significance of the site, whether that is the marine ecology or the squirrel glider habitat.

“A key feature of the development is really that environmental focus and providing that environmental outcome for the community.”

Source: Tony Moore, Brisbane Times