NINE GRAND, Cleveland, TX, New Golf Course Construction Tour 2/5/18

[Mike Nuzzo]

Howdy friends.
Next Monday Don and myself will be hosting a site construction visit to our current project, NINE GRAND, in Cleveland, TX.
Cleveland is 45 min Northeast of Houston - on the 59.


Particulars of the day: food and drinks and boots.
Overall the golf course does not require any significant earthwork.
All of the course can be seen or visualized.


This is a real estate development project.
Our parcel of land abuts the development - this is a core golf course!
Play is anticipated to begin this fall/winter.


NINE GRAND is the name of the big course.
THREE GRAND is the name of the nine hole par 3 course.
GRAND PUTTER is the name of the nine hole putting course.


Come hit a GRAND SLAM! 


Please RSVP to me mike(at)nuzzo[dot]net as you will need to enter the project in a SAFE manner.
There is significant work under construction on the development side - and not appropriate or SAFE for public visits.
We have our own separate entrance.

[RJ_Daley]

Gee I wish.  Can we look forward to pictures?

[Peter Pallotta]

Always nice to see RJ's name on the board - no exaggeration to say that he's forgotten more about gca than I'll ever know. Hope you're well, paisano.

Mike - not possible for me to visit, but I've read descriptions of this course and you have my best wishes for success. It does sound very close to my ideal. And I have a sense that your architectural style/philosophy and Don's approach to sustainability and cost effectiveness (throughtout the process, from design to maintenance) and Joe H's broad creative tastes and touch are an ideal match too.
Hearty congratulations on this new project
P

[Don Mahaffey]

The address is 2301 E Houston St. Cleveland, TX
That takes you to the front entrance where hwy 105 and Houston St intersect.  Do not enter there.   Go east on 105 toward Dayton/Beaumont about 1/2 mike and enter at gate to city water plant.  Take that road in until you pass the plant then take first right and you’ll be at our yard in no time.  We will have the grill going and drinks on ice. Bring good walking shoes.   

[Mark McKeever]

Sounds  like an awesome event.  Cant wait to see some pictures.

[Adam Lawrence]

You guys who are going will enjoy the tour. I had a great wander round yesterday with Mike, Don and the rest of their all-star construction crew. Be sure to take boots that you don't mind getting a bit muddy -- it's a full-on construction site at the moment, but there's plenty there to show that something pretty exciting is going to emerge.

[Michael Blake]

Hope it was a good turnout yesterday. Look forward to hearing about it.

[Mike Nuzzo]

It was great to see you on site Adam - thanks for visiting - glad we even got to our first concert!
We had a couple GCA lurking superintendents make a special trip over from San Antonio which was an enjoyable walk together.
And our long time GCA good friends the Lang's got the see our work in progress.
Other highlights were a great BBQ and Rob's special sauces.
And seeing our entire crew collaborate on and discuss the progress of our par 3 and putting courses - it is very special so far and only getting better day by day.
Cheers

[Steve Lang]

   Mike & Don,


Many thanks for the invite and hosting a GRAND day in Cleveland!  Was great surprise to see & reconnect with Joe, get to meet and chat with Angela and Rob and the boys over Mario's grilled fajitas, and that green sauce was hot stuff...  Ms. Sheila says hi and had fun  meeting the team and especially the "hike with Mike" in the dirt...  We expect to see ya'll tee it up with us some day in The Woodlands, to knock the dirt off those sticks seen in the back of the truck.


As i wandered around my nice clean sterile office today, was thinking about how I used to play in the dirt around our housing development knocked out of the woods in Monroeville, PA and became an enviro engineer partly so i could work outside, great to see the team working in the field, so much thought really goes into the product coming out of the dirt as it takes shape.., big envy! 


I'd really love to be a kid in the golfing candy store being developed there between/along the bayou's..


The mini-himalayas putting green will be a definite hit... 30 minutes   better put some lights up there, kids will be late for supper and out past dark enjoying the roll, I can see one popping easily onto the Grand 3000 (for 3000 seconds?), or then jumping to the Grand 9000 after #3007 if all's clear and upon surviving the big 9 and #9009, warmed up for big finish challenge on the longish #3008 and short gaming past #3009's bunker, with play-off back on the putting green...


Looking forward to seeing it grassed and in play!


s


ps. the Yellow Rose was a good choice

[Angela Moser]

Dear Steve and Sheila,


thank you so much for driving out to Mikes project. It was a pleasure meeting the both of you and we are all very happy to hear how much you like our candy store.


All the best and hopefully we can catch up sometime when it stops raining to play some golf together.


Angela

[Peter Pallotta]

Angela - your name often gets mentioned around here but you don't post very often. I'm hoping that you might take your involvement in this project as the opportunity to post/share your thoughts more frequently -- first, because I'd enjoy reading your perspective (as the 'next generation' of gcas) and second because I've already read more than enough from the likes of Mike, Don and Joe !
(Just joking about that 2nd part)
Peter

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Some construction pics and a layout here:


https://www.linksmagazine.com/mike-nuzzo-designing-neighborhood-golf-texas/

[George Pazin]

Thanks for the link, Steve.


Looking forward to reading more from everyone involved.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Thank you fellas
Writing an article about golf and building a golf course are both difficult tasks, in different ways.
To add context, our longtime treehouse friend Don, was brought in way before construction started.
Don has been a part of the overall projects conceptualization and its direction.
Robert, Don's project superintendent and our forever ago intern from Wolf Point, has been instrumental to the success so far. He has shaped and routed the putting course, which will be the most involved and complicated shaping on site.
There will be another chance to visit during construction. Cheers

[Don Mahaffey]

I'm glad my friend Mike is getting some press but I'm not thrilled with some of the article. I wasn't brought in to oversee construction, my company, Greenscape Methods IS the contractor and we had to win a competitive bid to get the job. We certainly were comfortable working with Mike and we'd been working with him on the design side for over a year, so we knew the players and the site.
Angela and Keith are very talented and we are thrilled to have them, but the author used their names because he was familiar with them and ignored my input on the rest of my team. Its been alluded to that I brought them on because of "name recognition" which couldn't be further from the truth. They are helping us for a little while because they are very talented and great teammates. But so are Joe Hancock, Robert Young and Gary Mahaffey. Credit is always a little dicey but those five all deserve equal billing, except maybe for Robert who, to use a great old Reggie Jackson line, is the straw that stirs the drink. 

[Tom_Doak]

those five all deserve equal billing, except maybe for Robert who, to use a great old Reggie Jackson line, is the straw that stirs the drink.

Don:


As someone who got to watch those Yankees up close, they were one of the most talented teams of all time, but you should be careful what you wish for !!  Reggie's line about himself being "the straw that stirs the drink" - delivered in Spring Training to a writer from SPORT magazine, before he had ever played a game with the Yankees, who were coming off an A.L. pennant the previous year - did not instill a cohesive clubhouse atmosphere.  They won the World Series the next two years, but almost killed each other in the process.

[Tim Martin]

those five all deserve equal billing, except maybe for Robert who, to use a great old Reggie Jackson line, is the straw that stirs the drink.

Don:


As someone who got to watch those Yankees up close, they were one of the most talented teams of all time, but you should be careful what you wish for !!  Reggie's line about himself being "the straw that stirs the drink" - delivered in Spring Training to a writer from SPORT magazine, before he had ever played a game with the Yankees, who were coming off an A.L. pennant the previous year - did not instill a cohesive clubhouse atmosphere.  They won the World Series the next two years, but almost killed each other in the process.

The Bronx Zoo. Great baseball and even better theater.

[Peter Pallotta]

I saw a game there in 1977, as a kid with my NY cousin (who was a Mets fan but who gladly took me up to the Bronx after I'd pestered him for two days with questions about Lou Gehrig and Murderers Row). Sat along the 3rd base line; a big fight broke out in the cente field bleachers; after the game I jumped onto the field and scooped up some Yankee Stadium dirt from the infield and saved it along with my ticket stub; bought a Yankees cap, and wore it on the drive back to my cousin's place in Bay Ridge -- it was still in the high 80s and humid, the subways covered in grafitti, the kids having jimmied open a fire hydrant and splashing around as the water poured out, across the bridge 'from the city' and back into Brooklyn and past Disco 2000 where they'd filmed Saturday Night Fever, still buzzing.
I've loved NYC ever since -- the great city.
Excuse the ramble ...

[Don Mahaffey]

those five all deserve equal billing, except maybe for Robert who, to use a great old Reggie Jackson line, is the straw that stirs the drink.

Don:


As someone who got to watch those Yankees up close, they were one of the most talented teams of all time, but you should be careful what you wish for !!  Reggie's line about himself being "the straw that stirs the drink" - delivered in Spring Training to a writer from SPORT magazine, before he had ever played a game with the Yankees, who were coming off an A.L. pennant the previous year - did not instill a cohesive clubhouse atmosphere.  They won the World Series the next two years, but almost killed each other in the process.

Robert has a personality more like Jose Altuve than Reggie J - he works with a smile - remember I said it ABOUT him which is a lot different than him saying it about himself.  Great story tho - those Yankee teams were not nice to my Dodgers

[Tom_Doak]

Robert has a personality more like Jose Altuve than Reggie J - he works with a smile - remember I said it ABOUT him which is a lot different than him saying it about himself.  Great story tho - those Yankee teams were not nice to my Dodgers

Thurman Munson was the guy his teammates said it ABOUT - though he was not famous for smiling.


What a shame to hear you were a Dodgers fan back then.  I might have to re-think our whole relationship.  Those Yankees seemed genuinely insulted when they got to the World Series after all they had been through with Boston and Kansas City, and heard that the Dodgers were favored.  Eventually, though, K.C. did win one from them, and so did L.A., and much later, Boston.  But not while Munson was alive.

[Adam Lawrence]

Here's my story on Nine Grand from GCA.


http://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/content/nuzzo-and-mahaffey-team-up-again-at-nine-grand

[Mike Nuzzo]

Adam!

Thank you Adam!


And a little known fact.
Tom and I, with my father, were both in attendance at the last game of the '77 series. Against the Dodgers!
*Check out my older daughter Isabelle's original shirt!

[George Pazin]

Not sure I believe that Mike Nuzzo is old enough to attend the last game of the '77 series, that might be fake news.


It would be hard to overstate how happy I am for Mike and Don, even with the inaccuracies Don notes. My very limited experience with the press is that they don't always hear what is actually said, preferring to rely instead on hearing what fits their narrative. That's just one of the many challenges anyone who deals with the press has to face; sometimes it helps you, sometimes it hurts you, and it's rarely what you would like to read... They're not necessarily out to get you, they just get lazy on occasion.


I've often said, one of the most apt, foreshadowing games we played as children as the telephone game. The ending point isn't necessarily the starting point.


Can't wait to read more!

[Adam Lawrence]

It would be hard to overstate how happy I am for Mike and Don, even with the inaccuracies Don notes. My very limited experience with the press is that they don't always hear what is actually said, preferring to rely instead on hearing what fits their narrative. That's just one of the many challenges anyone who deals with the press has to face; sometimes it helps you, sometimes it hurts you, and it's rarely what you would like to read... They're not necessarily out to get you, they just get lazy on occasion.

Yes, the press are all the same. And did you know, all t-shirt printers sleep with raccoons?

[George Pazin]

Come on, Adam, you know that is not what I said. I merely said that everyone dealing with the press has to be aware of what he or she is dealing with.


As is the case with all t shirt printers, also...




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EDIT: I don't know why, but it shrunk the rest of what I posted, which was this:


I've had puff pieces written on my business that quoted me with saying very positive things... that I did not say. They were trying to help me, but I don't need that kind of help. Report the news, as you do. The fact that Don had to correct what was reported pretty much makes my case. You were able to accurately report what the situation was, are you not annoyed that someone else wasn't?