PORT TOWNSEND — A two-year-long secret effort to build a visual performing arts center has golfers circulating a petition to protect the nearby city-owned golf course.

But Port Townsend City Councilwoman Michelle Sandoval who is one of the leaders of the effort to build the center, says golfers who use Port Townsend Golf Club have nothing to worry about.

“We have no intention of dislodging the golf course,” Sandoval said during a telephone interview Monday afternoon.

A group of golfers is circulating a petition asking that the nine-hole golf course situated between Blaine, Cherry, San Juan and Discovery streets not be reconfigured.

Mike Early, who has leased the course for more than 18 years, said golfers aren’t having any trouble getting people to sign the petition to keep the course in its current configuration.

Early said golfers might have been less worried if they’d been given an idea of the performing arts center effort.

“We hear all of these things, but they never talk to us,” Early said Monday.

“Every time a new idea to build something comes up, the first place mentioned is the golf course.”

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The rest of the story appears in Tuesday’s Peninsula Daily News Jefferson County edition.