National Links Trust signs a 50-year lease for Langston and Rock Creek and walks away from East Potomac

National Links Trust, the nonprofit that runs Washington's municipal golf courses, said Thursday that it signed a 50-year lease with the Interior Department and the National Park Service on Wednesday, Oct. 28, to manage, operate and rehabilitate Langston Golf Course and Rock Creek Park Golf. East Potomac Golf Links is not in the lease, and NLT said its role there will end "on or before Nov. 15, 2026."

That is the date President Trump set for closing East Potomac, which we covered Wednesday. Late Wednesday the administration told the court it will shut the entire East Potomac peninsula next month and push ahead with the redevelopment, the Washington Post reported. With no operator in place after NLT leaves, the government said in its filing, it would have to close the course. Nine days earlier, Justice Department lawyers had told the judge there was no plan to close it.

What NLT will build instead

The lease formalizes a deal first announced in May, after the administration terminated NLT's original 50-year lease for all three courses in December, according to the Washington Sun. NLT kept running East Potomac on an interim basis in the meantime.

At Rock Creek, NLT says it will resume major work in the coming months in two overlapping phases: a new clubhouse, driving range and practice facilities first, then the golf course renovation. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner stay on as architects and agreed to work pro bono. NLT projects completion in spring 2028, pending permits.

At Langston, a course NLT describes as sitting at the intersection of civil rights and sports, the group will expand its Jack Vardaman Workforce Development Program while it prepares a full rehabilitation. The program, run since 2021, gives local high school students paid internships and junior caddie jobs. NLT says it has put more than $450,000 into it, and its students have earned more than $750,000 in college scholarships, including three Evans Scholars. NLT says both courses will stay affordable and accessible.

East Potomac's next fight

The Park Service is due to submit East Potomac renovation plans to the National Capital Planning Commission by Friday, the same day administration lawyers are scheduled to explain their closure plan in court, the Washington Sun reported. Tom Fazio is designing the new course, and Golfweek reports renovation estimates as high as $50 million. Judge Ana Reyes's injunction still bars tree cutting there without a court order.

A lease that leaves East Potomac out is the clearest sign yet that the group running it expects the course to close on schedule.

What to do

If East Potomac is your home course, NLT is only committing to run it through Nov. 15 at the latest, so play it while you can. Then watch Friday's hearing in Reyes's court and the planning commission filing for the first full look at the Fazio redesign.