Corica Park (North Course)

Few municipal golf courses in America carry as layered a history as the North Course at Corica Park. Situated on the island city of Alameda — just minutes from Oakland Airport on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay — it began life in 1927 as the Earl Fry Course, designed by California architect William Park Bell, whose portfolio includes Bel-Air Country Club and Las Vegas Golf Club. For decades it served the East Bay's golfing public as part of the old Alameda Municipal complex, weathering the usual cycles of civic neglect and periodic reinvestment before its most dramatic chapter yet.

The story of the North Course's recent rebirth is a genuinely unusual one. Following the acclaimed 2018 transformation of the adjacent South Course by Rees Jones, operator Greenway Golf turned its attention to the tired North Course. Australian designer and construction specialist Marc Logan — who had worked alongside Jones on the South — was brought in to reshape the layout, importing bulk sand from a San Francisco construction project to create faux dunes, exaggerated fairway contours, and new green complexes in a style reminiscent of Australian sandbelt design. The first nine holes were completed and opened temporarily, but a protracted legal dispute between parties within the management structure and the City of Alameda brought construction to a halt for over two years.

When the legal situation was resolved, Greenway and the city started fresh, engaging the renowned Robert Trent Jones II Architects to complete the second nine and unify the two halves into a coherent whole. Jones' firm honoured the themes established on the first nine — wavy, rolling fairways, ground-game golf, and dramatic green complexes — while adding memorable water features on the back nine that raise the stakes in the closing stretch. All 18 holes reopened to the public in March 2025 to considerable fanfare, with Golf Digest describing it as a fascinating design at exceptional public value.

The resulting course is unlike almost anything else in Bay Area public golf. Wide, undulating fairways ripple across the flat Alameda landscape in a manner that evokes both the Scottish seaside and the Australian sandbelt, inviting players to use the ground as much as the air in approaching targets. Scottish-style pot bunkers punctuate the layout, punishing wayward shots while adding visual drama. The greens are fast, true, and often dramatically contoured, rewarding golfers who study the correct entry points and approach angles. Water comes into play on several back nine holes, adding genuine risk-reward decisions that give the closing stretch a distinctive character.

At well under 6,400 yards from the back tees and playing to a par of 72, the North Course is accessible to all standards, yet its firm, fast conditions and inventive contouring ensure that low scores must be earned. It is a walking course at heart — the terrain suits those who prefer to feel the ground underfoot — and the natural habitats woven through the layout give it an ecological richness unusual for an urban public facility.

As the more affordable and newly restored companion to the celebrated South Course, the North Course completes one of the most compelling 36-hole public golf complexes in the western United States.