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A Denver native who's not ready to say goodbye to City Park Golf Course as he knows it

Andy Lyford isn't ready to say goodbye to City Park Golf Course.

Driving around town you might have seen some "Ditch the Ditch" signs in people's yards. Long story short, it all has to do with the expansion of I-70 - and a citywide construction project in Denver to reshape the storm drainage system.

RELATED: I-70 expansion given the green light despite neighborhood objections

The city will tell you the two aren't connected. The critics say they are. That's not what this story is about.

Part of that drainage project would build a huge retention pond at City Park Golf course. That means the course will close at the end of this year, and the whole thing will be redesigned. A brand new golf course will open in 2019, but one Andy Lyford is a Denver native with a strong opinion on that.

"I grew up playing City Park Golf Course. It's one of my happiest places on Earth ... It's in the middle of the city. It has the best views of the city ... It's suffocating. I guess that's the word I would use because we're Western people. We're Colorado people. None of us were originally from here, so we want people to come here. We welcome it, but a lot of times, we feel that the traditions and things that we love are being trampled on. I'm almost 50, but it seems like I've seen the amount of growth that most people would see over the course of 100 years..."

Andy was emotional describing what growing up on the course has meant to him. You can hear from Andy in the video above. 

The city says this drainage project is necessary to relieve flooding problems in neighborhoods. A group is suing the city over the City Park plan, claiming the city is trying to illegally convert the course into non-park use land

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