Winners' club: success stories from public golf course renovations.

America's turn-of-the-century golf course building boom appears to have subsided for the moment. After having witnessed an average of 300 new courses open for play in each of the previous 10 years, owners and operators of existing facilities--municipal and daily-fee--can breathe a sigh of relief: Only 248 opened last year.

Yet while the new development tide has been somewhat stemmed, the competitive quandary remains. Because National Golf Foundation figures indicate that more than 80 percent of the 3,127 new courses built since 1993 are public, and the number of golfers in America is flat at approximately 25 million, and has remained so for a decade, how do older, established layouts compete with this glut of glitzy new venues?

The choices for operators of existing, privately owned daily-fee facilities are clear: Compete or die. The most common ways of achieving the former have become equally clear--daily fees are renovating in record numbers, refurbishing greens and adding nine (where possible) to better measure up with the new courses all around them.

Outside observers may believe that municipal golf operations across the country needn't deal with these competitive pressures, but we know better. Community-owned golf courses are obliged to fight for golfers just as privately owned facilities do. If municipalities can't keep the customers they have, what had been self-supporting golf operations might begin leaning on taxpayers, which is never an easy sell. What's more, the surpluses that many municipal golf divisions run, which often support non-revenue producing divisions within a city or town, dry up.

So it's not surprising that municipal golf courses, many of which are 50 or more years old, are renovating in increasing numbers, too.

Detailed below are four case studies of publicly owned facilities that have renovated or expanded, not only to better compete, but also to provide better, safer golf courses that are more environmentally sensitive, more resistant to modern traffic levels and more economically viable in the long term.

Bartlett Hills Golf Course Bartlett, Ill.

Bob Gavelek claims no visionary mantle. When he arrived at Bartlett Hills Golf Course in 1981, he didn't foresee the course-building frenzy that would begin in the Chicago area 10 years later. Even so, one of the first things he did was push through a master redevelopment plan for renovating what was then a 60-year-old golf course.

"[Bartlett] purchased the course in 1978, and it committed fairly quickly to fixing this place up," recalls Gavelek, now the director of golf at Bartlett Hills. "It was an obvious call. This course was 18 greens and 18 tees, and that's it. No bunkers, a nothing golf course that wasn't attractive to better golfers, even middling golfers. We committed capital improvement funds to the plan, and we've been working on the layout ever since."

When Gavelek says "we," he means the golf operation. Public funds have almost never been used to fund the Bartlett Hills course renovation, which started in 1985 and was completed only last fall. The course architects at Marengo, Ill.-based Lohmann Golf Designs completed the task in nine installments over 17 years.

"There's no advantage to doing it that way; other than we could fund it ourselves," Gavelek explains. "It's probably better to close the course down and do it all at once, but Bartlett wanted to fund it through what are essentially user fees, as opposed to a bond issue. It took a while, but now that we're finished, I'm happy that the last years of my tenure here will be free of construction."

Understanding Bartlett's long-term approach, Lohmann Golf Designs drew up a master plan that prioritized the layout's most pointed shortcomings, while also standardizing the amount each project, or installment, would cost. "Easier for a client to plan ahead that way," says Lohmann Golf Designs founder and principal Bob Lohmann, a past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

The first installment included a new 1st tee and 9th green. Next, in order of priority, came more new greens, bunkers and some entirely new holes to replace those lost when Lohmann created a new practice facility. The projects were ticked off of the master plan, "sometimes yearly; sometimes every other year depending on the money we had," says Gavelek, who noted that most projects were initiated in the fall (to cut down on rounds lost to construction), seeded before the snow fell and reopened the following spring.

Seven years ago Bartlett, which is located 20 minutes west of O'Hare Airport, authorized a $5.5 million bond issue to build Bartlett Hills a new clubhouse. The project came in under budget, and the village agreed to Gavelek to spend the leftover funds to install a double-row irrigation system. These were the only public funds expended on the course during the 17-year renovation project, and they were well spent. As Lohmann points out, proper irrigation enhances playing conditions course-wide, and also helped Bartlett's new bentgrass fairways grow in better and faster.

"Last year we bit the bullet and closed the course on Sept. 3" Gavelek says. "We finished four greens, the new 5th tee and built three new forward tees in-house.

"It's been an amazing transformation. We went from a clubhouse that barely served hamburgers to a $3 million facility doing banquets and outings. The golf course is really nice now; it attracts all different types of play, from very good players to women and kids and corporate outings. We're able to host U.S. Golf Association qualifying, Illinois PGA events and high school regionals. We couldn't have done that before."

Chevy Chase Goff Course Wheeling, Ill.

Much of this suburban Chicago layout, operated by the Wheeling Park District, is located within the tributary flood plain of the Des Plaines River. For years, when it rained heavily, Chevy Chase Golf Course was rendered unplayable, and not just for a day or two, but for weeks. One year, according to Wheeling Park District Executive Director Jan Buchs, the facility lost a third of its season. What's more, several neighborhoods abutting the course also suffered, in the form of flooded basements, from this adverse stormwater-retention situation.

The Wheeling Park District retained a course-design firm three years ago to address the chronic flooding and drainage issues on and around Chevy Chase, a 1925 Tom Bendelow layout that had come to embody all the negative connotations of municipal golf: 18 unimaginative, 70-year-old golf holes further hampered by deteriorating playing conditions. Accordingly, in addition to an inventive stormwater scheme that involved creation of several on-course retention ponds, the revised master plan called for the course to receive a substantial facelift.

The renovation plan focused on drainage, according to project architect Todd Quitno. "There's a creek which runs through the golf course,' he notes. "It's a tributary to the Des Plaines River, and it flooded all the time. Our plan controls the flooding on course by developing several retention ponds, which will also alleviate flood problems in surrounding neighborhoods. This creek used to run across several golf holes; it was extremely penal. So by replacing this continuous line of creek with some ponds, we also made certain holes far less penal while providing more retention capability."

The park district secured a $1.6 million debt certificate and closed the course for all of the 2002 golf season. Working with The Bruce Co., a Middleton, Wis.-based construction firm, the design consultants completed work last fall. The new Chevy Chase Golf Course is scheduled to debut in July, which will signal the dawn of a new era for Wheeling and its community-owned course.

"We're not just opening what is essentially a new golf course," says Buchs. "We're entering a new market--a more upscale, high-quality market. We've done a lot of renovation throughout the park district, and the golf course was the last existing property to bring up to the next level. We renovated the clubhouse and banquet facility at Chevy Chase beforehand, and wanted the course to measure up. They didn't complement one another; now they'll mirror one another. It's a great facility to have within the community of Wheeling--and reducing flooding in the neighborhood makes it a win-win."

Ellis Park Golf Course Cedar Rapids, Iowa

In 1999, Cedar Rapids signed an eight-year agreement with a course-design firm to renovate and expand its quartet of municipally owned course facilities. The master plan calls for the complete renovation and/or expansion of one course every two years. The work at Jones Park Golf Course was completed in 2001. When Ellis Park reopened in the spring of 2003, attention turned to Twin Pines Golf Course, to be followed by Gardner Memorial Golf Course.

With four courses on offer in Cedar Rapids, you might not think that course expansion was a city priority. Yet it features prominently in the master plan. Once a flat and featureless nine-hole course, Jones Park reopened two years ago as an inventive, 18-hole, par-70 design. The existing loop was completely retooled, and nine new holes, scores of bunkers and 10 ponds were added. The result is a golf facility almost unrecognizable from the original, a track locals now call the crown jewel of the Cedar Rapids municipal golf scene, according to Tom Lavrenz, director of golf for the City of Cedar Rapids.

"It's been a tremendous addition," Lavrenz says. "Last year we averaged between 350 and 400 18-hole rounds a day at Jones Park, compared to 280 9-hole rounds before it was renovated. Do the math! It's a more difficult course, but I've had nary one complaint."

Lavrenz says the city's long-term renovation plans have as much to do with uniformity as with competition and safety.

"We chose this path for a number of reasons," he says. "Our first project expanded nine to 18. Obviously, as you can see from the upswing in rounds played at Jones Park, the demand in this particular area is much greater for 18 than nine. In taking this step, we needed to do all the other courses, because you don't want one new and the rest old, especially considering the leaps and bounds in technology we've seen in course maintenance, with things like grass types.

"At Ellis Park, the course currently growing in, the greens were built in the early 1950s. They had seen their useful life. They had very poor drainage underneath, too. What's more, the back nine at Ellis Park was very unsafe. We weren't getting any play out there because it was too difficult to walk. That drove the decision to rebuild there, and again, if you're going to do one nine, you may as well do the other one to make it uniform.

So that's what we did.

"Each course has it own issues," Lavrenz continues. "So if you ask whether we renovated because of deteriorating playing conditions, or safety concerns, or competitive pressures, the answer is yes, yes and yes, It was never solely an issue of losing rounds to new courses, which we do have around here. All four golf courses within the city have traditionally done 180,000 to 220,000 rounds in a given year. Losing that business was never a major concern, but with all these new courses, it might have become one.

You're talking about courses that were reaching the 40- and 50-year marks. They were worn out."

The back nine at Ellis Park, the original loop, is older than that. It was built over severe terrain in the 1920s; architect William Langford came in 20 years later and added nine.

"The back nine at Ellis Park was very hilly and quite unsafe," says senior architect Mike Benkusky, who oversaw the renovation. "It was unwalkable for the older clientele, and unsafe due to the location of several blind tees, greens and fairways. So we completely rerouted this nine. The front nine retains its current routing, but we're designing all new greens, tees and fairway bunkers. I expect the new Ellis Park layout will probably exceed the results at Jones Park, if only because the land--because it's so hilly--is more interesting."

Two down. Two to go.

Randall Oaks Golf Club. Dundee, Ill.

As far back as 1986, the Dundee Township Park District recognized that its Randall Oaks Golf Club needed work. Serious work. The 6,200-yard layout was short, tight and awkward in spots; the sorry condition of its bunkers was matched only by that of its tees. Seventeen years later, full-scale renovation work has finally begun.

"It's common for municipalities and park districts to 'consider' upgrading their golf courses, but a variety of factors can make it difficult to pull the trigger," says Bob Lohmann. "Architects have to be particularly patient and flexible with public entities. In Dundee, for example, the issue was land. It wasn't worth renovating the course until the park district could get a hold of additional property. The existing site was cramped and inadequate; it would have been wasteful and impractical to perform a comprehensive restoration on the same 120-acre footprint."

Between 1986 and 2002, Lohmann worked with Dundee Township to execute limited aspects of the master plan--renovating a bunker here, remodeling a tee complex there. Each time, the master plan was adjusted. The park district had secured an additional 40-acre parcel back in the late 1980s, adjacent to Randall Oaks, yet it wasn't until two years ago, when the park district came into another 15 acres, that the much-tweaked master plan was finalized and the township bonded Se million for the project.

"What the park district did was sell bonds, and the golf course revenue will pay back the bonds," explains Randall Oaks course superintendent Mike Sprouse. "We're paying the park district back with our revenues."

Phase I involves the renovation of nine holes while creating a brand new practice facility. Key to Phase I was leaving nine holes untouched and open for play. Why? "Revenue, revenue, revenue," explains Lohmann. "Hey, you can't blame the park district for wanting to keep a revenue stream going while all this work is underway. The bond payments don't stop just because construction has started. And I can tell you from experience that municipal golf course revenues often defray the cost of other park district programs that have nothing to do with golf.

"Again, from an architect's perspective, projects like these require patience. We've been waiting 16 years to fully renovate this course! We'd love to shut the whole thing down and reopen 18 next year, a la Chevy Chase, but municipal projects don't always work that way. It takes time, flexibility and creativity to map out and properly sequence a renovation so that nine holes remain open."

Such is the case at Randall Oaks Golf Course, where work began last fall on the 55 additional acres acquired by the park district--another scheduling coup which allowed play to continue on the original 18 through Labor Day 2002. Thereafter, the entire front nine were closed, several new holes were created on this parcel (including the new practice facility) and everything was seeded before the first snow.

"We should be playing this new nine-hole routing by August," explains Sprouse. "When the new nine reopens, you won't recognize it. Several original holes were sacrificed to make way for the practice facility; only two original green sites will be part of the new routing. It'll be a completely new, and vastly superior nine holes."

Phase II of the Randall Oaks project will mean a similarly radical make-over of the remaining nine, but it's not clear when that project will commence. "It's hard to say when we'll get to Phase II; there's no definite timetable," Sprouse says. "It depends on our new revenues. We'll be just nine holes for a big part of this year. We'll probably want to go a full year with 18--starting August--to get those revenues back up. Which means we might not renovate the remaining nine until fall 2004."

That would make it 20 years and counting. Clearly, there's no rush.