Golf | Paloheinä golf course is expanding: “It was a surprise”

Helsinki City Council on August 28, 2024, approved a plan change that allows Paloheinä’s everyman golf course to be expanded to 18 holes. The council was unanimous in its decision, and the city government’s proposal was not even voted on.

In the spring of 2022, Paloheinä Golf Oy submitted an application to expand the course into a full-scale 18-hole golf course. Paloheinä golf course operates on land owned by the city of Helsinki. The new leased area is approximately 30 hectares, doubling the size of the current field.

The site plan change applies to the grassy areas of the Paloheinä sports park and the Haltiala landscape fields located in the Tuomarinkylä district.

“The council’s decision shows that everyone’s opportunity to play golf has been well understood in Helsinki,” states the golf entrepreneur Hanna Teerijok.

Teerijoki had told Golf course– magazine that the approval of the project will be surprisingly painless in the end.

“That was a surprise! The last time there was really strong opposition.”

With his comment, Teerijoki referred to the decision-making process about 15 years ago, as a result of which the Paloheinä field became the current Isok Ys in 2013.

of the city of Helsinki the decision states that the nature conservation areas outside the area of ​​change have taken into account the plan change. In the expansion, the goal is to take biodiversity into account in the planning area so that the preserved edge zones of the expansion area and the vegetation to be sown and planted, as well as the golf course’s sand barriers and wetlands, would have a strengthening effect on biodiversity.

The decision becomes final after a 30-day appeal period, i.e. 27.9.

If the appeal process does not slow down the schedule, construction work can start as early as next year. It takes more than two years to build the field itself.