On April 13th Patrick Mucci asked the following questions about the Ardrossan project:
“I found the deal breaking incident with GMCC and Scott very interesting.
Imagine if you will, instead of declaring the hole inviolate, if TE had said, let me work on that and get back to you, left the meeting and presented the problem to C&C. How different might golf and golf architecture been in the Philly area?
My curiosity is, what did the Scott family want with an established golf facility?
Development?
What were the two parcels zoned for?”
Patrick:
At the time of the Ardrossan Farm project, the zoning at Ardrossan included a golf course use. Before our project the family had marketed and sold (unlisted) on their own perhaps 150 acres of the farm on the opposite side of Newtown Street Rd (which divided the farm) in ten acre lots that kept the land looking quite open and as it had been for a century. That left them about 350 remaining acres that we were dealing with some part of. The family member who did that was the same one (Edgar (Eddie) Scott) I dealt with on the GMGC/Ardrossan project. He marketed those ten acre lots (I think the minimum residential use zoning of that part of Radnor Township, Delaware County at that time was two acres) in a very unusual way. The ten acre lots were offered unlisted for $1 million dollars each with the stipulation that there would be no negotiation on price. At the time, we in real estate thought that was insane but he sold them all quickly and without effort.
Apparently it was Eddie Scott’s idea to approach Gulph Mills Golf Club and offer to do a swap of Ardrossan land for Gulph Mills Golf Club’s land. The offer made to us was a straight land swap (no financial outlay on either side) which is sometimes called a “like-kind” swap. On its face the idea was quite brilliant for the Montgomery Scott family and their beloved Ardrossan Farm. It would have allowed them to essentially sell GMGC’s land into commercial development while keeping the look of their farm more open with a golf course rather than some minimum acre zoning multi-lot development on their land. In that way they could’ve maximized the value of their land without ruining the look of it.
And why did the Montgomery Scott family approach GMGC? One of the reasons I was told is they felt GMGC on their Ardrossan Farm was ideal because they knew most of the club’s members anyway. During those two or three years I was told they would not consider offering any other golf club the same deal because they did not really know them. Again, this is another example of that small and intertwined world that’s been mentioned in both parts of this interview.
Ardrossan was one of the 4-5 great estates (500 acres or more) left in the Philadelphia suburban area in recent years. The others included the Dupont estate in Newtown Square (John Dupont who shot the wrestler), Erdenheim Farm next to Whitemarsh Valley GC that belonged to Fitzhugh Dixon, Almira and Hardy Scott’s Kirkwood Farm that is next to me. Those estates were not ordinary farms, they were more in the style and type of those famous English manor estates or parks. I think the over-all landscape plan done on Ardrossan over a century ago was by the famous Olmsted Bros of Boston that did a number of landscape and land development plans on some of the most significant golf clubs in America (ex. Fishers Island GC, Mountain Lake GC or even Cypress Point, although some with good knowledge believe the latter was actually a different Olmsted).
However, if we had gotten approval from the Montgomery Scott family and the directors of GMGC at that meeting in the mansion at Ardrossan that I explained in Part One, there was still a long way to go before the project would’ve come to fruition. And yes, what I did that night by refusing to give up that one hole definitely was the kind of mistake a novice such as me at that time was more prone to make. I could’ve asked Robert Montgomery Scott (the apparent patriarch of the family at the time) myself why he objected to that hole before I refused to give it up but I didn’t even do that. If we had gotten agreement that night, though, it was basically my routing that approval would have been given to, although Bill did say if there were some problems that came up with it they could probably be fixed. The Ardrossan routing on a 1” by 200’ topo map still sits above me on two rafters.
Some have asked to see it but I feel it cannot really be fully appreciated without taking it out on the land itself as I once did years ago with Ran Morrissett. Frankly I’d forgotten about that until he reminded me of it recently. And further to that I should say that I cannot now remember exactly why it was Ran came to my farm all those years ago but I do remember when I mentioned to him I was originally from Long Island and Piping Rock which was the traditional friendly rival of The Creek Club, he immediately picked up the phone and called George Holland, the primary historian of The Creek Club. From that George Holland has become a truly wonderful friend and a man I collaborate with all the time on many things to do with research on the history of golf course architecture. From that I even came to collaborate at The Creek Club on their restoration with Gil Hanse (who lives only five miles from me and who I have known from the beginning of my interest in golf architecture).
The landform of that great hole I refused to give up still sits there just the way it was back then!! It was absolutely huge with the first half taking in fairway about 150 yards wide and with the second half on a slight diagonal taking in almost 250 yards in width (and somewhat melding into the next hole that was directed about 90 degrees perpendicular) with a green on a narrowish diagonal ridge on the far left. When I mentioned this hole to Bill he said it was so big it would be hard to focus the golfer’s eye on where to hit the ball. I said; “Why do we need to focus the golfer’s eye, why can’t he just look around and figure that out for himself?” After thinking about that a while Bill just looked at me and said nothing----which---from my experiences with him is often his way of expressing approval or confirmation.
I feel that anyone with half an eye for architecture could not help but recognize just by looking at that landform how great that hole could’ve been and virtually without doing anything to it shaping-wise! If we had to build a two-walled "HaHa" in the middle of it so that Mr. Scott's cattle could get from their barn to where they grazed thereby solving his problem and objection, I feel that probably would have served to make the hole even more interesting and unique.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back and reconsider and redo the mistakes we've made in our lives we did not know how to solve or resolve at the time? Unfortunately, that's just not the way life works.