How To Spend $4 Million

[Tom_Doak]

I've been asked on a couple of other threads to share information on the budgeting for the golf course at Common Ground in Denver.  Some fellow architects and some potential developers-to-be have wondered why the course cost so much when cost control was so vital.

The whole premise of the project was that the state golf association had saved $4 million to redo the course and they could not exceed that number.  Indeed, I am told that one or two other architects bidding on the job told them they couldn't do a good course for this amount, and that they should borrow so they could spend $6 million or $8 million to build a really nice course.  [I will only share the names of those guys off the record.]  Our promise was to make their $4 million go as far as it could.

This was a total redesign and rerouting, so there were some costs that could be classed as "demolition" of old greens and tees and bunkers which were in the way and needed to be reshaped.  Also, as Eric Iverson points out in his notes (which follow this post), we also managed to scrimp and save enough to shape and grass a 9-hole kids' course WITHIN the budgeted total, even though it was not directly costed out anywhere.

The budget below was our preliminary cost estimate [doing it that way so I'm not sharing any proprietary secrets].  It was for $4 million although it had to be upped to $4.5 million to cover the recommended irrigation system, as Eric's notes will detail.

[Tom_Doak]

Note:  We work in big round numbers at this stage.

PRELIMINARY BUDGET

Design Fees   $300,000   This paid my associates.

Erosion Control / Demolition     $50,000

Tree Relocation     $50,000

Earthmoving     $200,000     50,000 cy @ $4.00     We had to remove 50,000 cubic yards of soil from the flood control basin the course sits in, due to requirements for neighboring development.  This dirt could only be located outside the flood control basin along the roads on the perimeter.

Shaping     $200,000

Drainage     $150,000     We had some existing drains to tie into, which was good, because the site was pretty flat and there were some big underground pipes which prevented running surface drains.

Irrigation and pump station     $1,100,000     See Eric's notes.

Greens construction     $425,000     Materials and construction for USGA greens (plus push-up greens for kids' course)

Tee construction     $150,000

Finish grading     $200,000

Paths     $75,000     We recycled the asphalt that had been on the old paths and made 5-foot paths from it, which turned out great.

Bunker sand     $100,000     3000 tons, but I'm guessing we didn't use that much.

Grassing     $275,000

Bunker construction     $100,000

Irrigation pond liner     $100,000

Contingency     $275,000

SUBTOTAL     $3,750,000

Permitting and Engineering     $50,000     Greatly exceeded because of demands of old Air Force Base - fortunately, that was the Federal government's responsibility!

Agronomy consulting     $20,000

Project manager for CGA     $180,000

TOTAL     $4,000,000

[Tom_Doak]

from Eric Iverson:

Tom,


I was noticing this evening the GCA thread on CommonGround and the construction costs involved.  I also noticed that you mentioned posting a budget next week showing how quickly costs can escalate.  I feel very strongly that what was produced at CommonGround at the time was as much blood as anyone has squeezed out of a turnip before or since.  In addition to the budget outline, I thought it might be helpful to send you a brief fact sheet to help everyone understand how the money can vaporize on a project like this.  I won't attempt to craft them into any sort of organized rebuttal, that's better left to you.  Rather, just the random facts, do with them what you will.


Budget Highlights
- $250,000 to remediate compensatory volume from the landfill
- $55,000 extra to line the irrigation pond with pvc instead of clay, due to use of effluent water.
- $1.68 million in irrigation, tied to the highest prices ever paid for petroleum products in this country, during the summer of 2008, which affected all budget line items.
- $100,000 worth of demolition, excluding clearing , of which there was a fair amount.  Old buildings, bridges, as well as golf course features, all of which had to be disposed of and the areas re-vegetated.
- $40,000 in mandatory tree mitigation from the City of Aurora.
- $135,000 for telemetry and mandatory delivery components required to receive effluent water from Denver Water.
- $50,000 for grading and topsoil to build the entire 2nd and 17th holes above grade, entirely from fill, a requirement to avoid uncovering the Air Force's dangerous unmentionables in those areas.


Facility Highlights
- Unlike a Mom and Pop operation in a small town, the entire objective of this project was to get as many people on the golf course as possible.  High traffic and good pace of play means durable turf grass, and lots of it, which in Denver means adequate irrigation.  The fairways are huge, the USGA greens average 7,000 sq. ft., mowed with triplexes.  When the business model is based on the place being packed everyday, undercooking the infrastructure would have been a mistake.  Since opening on May 20th, CommonGround is AVERAGING over 200 rounds per day, every day, seven days a week, and is holding up wonderfully.  A new golf course with smaller greens, tees or fairways would likely be a mess. 


- Convinced that the range is a money maker, the CGA decided to spend the money to have a double ended, fully irrigated range, more than 10 acres of turf.  Something we wouldn't have spent that much money on.


- Last but not least, there are 27 holes of golf there.  We did our best to build the kid's course cheaply, recycling greens mix from the old course, using old heads, etc, but that all still costs money.  Not to mention the other irrigation costs, finishing, grassing, grow-in, etc.  With a practice green for the kids, and a putting clock near #10 tee for 1st and 10th tee starts during a big event, all in, that's 31 greens on the property.


Hopefully you can point out that comparing construction budgets is not the Price is Right, rather producing good golf that fits the clients needs for the lowest amount possible.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Tom

If you can answer, I would be interested in what you may have to say about the following 

Are you happy with the final result? Not seeking an official statement just how you personally feel the project has turned out, all things considering.

Also, will the on going maintenance program be adding anything to the course as part of the construction process (installing more hazards, etc), but in fact being covered by a different budget. In other words, is the course completely finished? Or is this an Ops moment.

Melvyn

[Tom_Doak]

Melvyn:

The course is 100% finished.  The only outstanding item is a clubhouse, which has been put on hold indefinitely; they are operating out of a temporary facility and will probably do so for some time.

And I am very happy with how it turned out.  I agree 100% with Eric's last statement [which I omitted!], that I would be happy to put up what we accomplished for $4 million against what anybody else could do under the same circumstances.

[Chip Gaskins]

Tom-

This is great stuff.  I really enjoy the business side of GCA and trying to figure how to make a little go a long way....so this is very great of you to share!  Thanks to Eric as well

One quick question...is it common to break out "Earth Moving", "Shaping", and "Finish Grading" into three different line items?

Thanks again,
Chip

[Adam Russell]

Tom -

I've always wanted to know if you had to foot the bill for the cost of mitigating the spread-out "unmentionables" of the Air Force, and overall how much that cost in terms of lost time/resources. I can remember a few days where crews had to be called in for certain places and work was shut down..

[Greg Chambers]

Chip,

Each course I've been involved with the contruction the earth moving, shaping, and finish grading were always three different line items.  In a couple of cases the earth moving was done by a different contractor who was doing the dirt work for the entire development project.  Then the golf contractor came in and did the shaping and finish grading.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Tom

Thanks for the answers.

It was not intended as a trick question, but with budget constraints it can limit the actual construction process (not necessary the quality), but I would not have thought the design intent. Sorry, my question was not clear enough, I was referring to the overall design, as you stated the whole course had to be rerouted

Melvyn

[Todd Bell]

Tom,

Is the golf course irrigated with 100% effluent water?  Also, do you know the cost of the effluent water?  

[Tom_Doak]

Chip:

As Greg said, it's nearly always three separate line items.

Earthmoving is moving stuff from Point A to Point B with a dump truck or scraper ... the part done by a general contractor.  We normally have very small earthmoving budgets for our courses; this budget would have been close to zero, had it not been for the requirement to move a certain volume of earth out of the basin.

Shaping is moving earth with dozers in the creation of golf features, prior to irrigation.  At Common Ground this was all done by my associates and a couple of our former interns.

Finish grading is putting things back together after irrigation, and getting everything ready to plant ... some bulldozer work, but a lot of sand pro work and raking and shoveling.  That's the part Adam is now expert on.

Todd:

I'm not sure if the course has the option of using fresh water sometimes, but the irrigation pond is effluent water.  I don't know what the water supply costs them on an annual basis.

[Tim Liddy]

Great information. Thanks for sharing.

[Adrian_Stiff]

$4,000,000 goes much much further in the UK.

I am currently finishing one off. We built this on a flattish site using imported landfill to make the shapes.

Design fees  and construction supervision 300,000
Greens materials, rootzone, grit, stone     275,000
Tee rootzone                                        65,000
Approach and surround rootzone              90,000
Irrigation greens, tees, fairways, mains     185,000
Labour                                                465,000
Drainage materials                                 128,000
Machine hire (shaping- loading - d trucks) 155,000
Seeding, fertiliser                                   63,000

Cost to build golf course,  apprpx $1,726,000 although $2,000,000 received in landfill income so nett cost to build the course is

MINUS $274,000

[Garland Bayley]

Adrian,

Am I understanding your post correctly? If we quit building dumps, and instead build golf courses, we can make money after all expenses?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian,

Am I understanding your post correctly? If we quit building dumps, and instead build golf courses, we can make money after all expenses?

Yes Bayley, we built the golf course and it cost us nothing and by importing inert waste we made money.... perfect recycling!!!!

[Tom_Doak]

$4,000,000 goes much much further in the UK.

Yes, Adrian, the difference in the irrigation budgets alone is $1.5 million, and that's not even counting what it costs to clean up the mess after they install the irrigation.  That's what good natural rainfall and grow-in patience will do for you.

Other than that, the only big differences in the two budgets are the cost of USGA greens materials, and the difference in shaping costs.  And for all I know the shaping on your course is better than ours; but I would bet on my guys.

[Jerry Kluger]

Tom:  Could you explain the particular reasons for using USGA greens versus pushup greens and the types of grasses used on the fairways/ roughs and greens.  thanks, Jerry

[Tom_Doak]

Jerry:

The overriding answer to all of your questions is "traffic".  We expect this course to host 40,000+ rounds per year so every decision about grasses and construction methods was based on wear and tear.

I will usually build USGA greens if we have to import the greens material from off-site, which we had to do here.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Tom- How near the book do you build 'your' USGA greens? The ones I have just done are a bit off the path, probably because of inspiration I have got from this site. I did not use the sandpro very much in the finish off so i had more ledges than smoothed areas, at first I was worried how bumpy they looked, but a few months later they look as I had wanted. They seem to behave as normal.

My point is, it's hard to get a true USGA green by achieving a bumpier looking green.

Yes you are ofcourse correct. Irrigation is the huge difference in UK and US or indeed most other places costs, we probably only irrigate for 10-15% of the time, maybe on fairways this would be half the time on conviental soils. The other big saving was the earthmoving because my fill material was hauled into position for nothing. I only used 1 D6 for the whole job.

[Doug Wright]

Tom,

Thank you and Eric very much for this information. This is the sort of informative data that makes GolfClubAtlas.com so great for the non-professional who's interested in all aspects of golf course architecture.

For those who haven't played it, the finished product is really good. Hard to compare the result here with other courses with comparable budgets because I don't really know what other courses cost. For example, what was the cost of Wild Horse, which I might view as comparable?

[Tom_Doak]

I think Wild Horse was built for $1 million or $1.5 million.  They got a lot of work from the locals for practically nothing, and Dan and Dave worked incredibly cheap back then.  Value-for-money, that place would be hard to beat.

Sand Hills and Ballyneal and Barnbougle were also done for budgets of $2 million or slightly under.  I know that sounds impossible, but when you are paying $0 for drainage and $0 for earthmoving and $0 for greens construction and $0 for bunker sand [and $0 for a pond liner and $0 for cart paths and $0 for tree relocation], the numbers come down pretty quickly.  It's really all just shaping and irrigation and grassing, which costs significantly more on a windy, erodable, sandy site.

[Doug Wright]

I think Wild Horse was built for $1 million or $1.5 million.  They got a lot of work from the locals for practically nothing, and Dan and Dave worked incredibly cheap back then.  Value-for-money, that place would be hard to beat.

Sand Hills and Ballyneal and Barnbougle were also done for budgets of $2 million or slightly under.  I know that sounds impossible, but when you are paying $0 for drainage and $0 for earthmoving and $0 for greens construction and $0 for bunker sand [and $0 for a pond liner and $0 for cart paths and $0 for tree relocation], the numbers come down pretty quickly.  It's really all just shaping and irrigation and grassing, which costs significantly more on a windy, erodable, sandy site.

Amazing figures for those courses given the end products. They're definitely in different settings/situations vis a vis CommonGround.

[Mark Arata]

Just makes me want to scream when I hear that they are spending 45m to build 2 courses on land that was already a golf course in New Orleans.........

Of course their line items look much different than yours...

Bribes to Local Politicians - 5m
Kickbacks to Local Business leaders - 5m
Slush Fund for pet projects (hookers, booze, drugs, legal fees) 20m
Grand Oversized Clubhouse, phallic shaped, to make up for their other "shortcomings" 10m
Fee for "name" GCA. 3.5m
Actual money spent on golf courses.....1.5m

[Sean Eidson]

It's also curious how Justin Timberlake's course renovation ended up costing $16 million.

I think the LEED platinum designation is something to be proud of and he probably gets some credit for serving as the R&D lab for some of those concepts, but even if you said that's 10 million, there's still 150% of the budget left over.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Costs go crazy when you move lots of soil, when the soils are poor, when the landscapes need massive amounts of drainage. And sometimes the design fees are very high if you want a name to sell the community.