Great photos. It looks stunning. What was the budget? How much was taxpayer money vs private contributions? Maybe this was covered last year in a similar thread. I can’t recall.
$10m if you just count the course - sand capping was a big part of that, which paid off today. $15m if you include such things as relocating tennis courts in order to expand the practice range for the Tour.
100% private money for the renovation - we even had to reimburse the city for lost tee times if the construction schedule ran over the plan! (It didn’t.). Because it was all privately funded, no red tape about bidding things out.
Perhaps we forgot how this was funded in the excitement of it opening, but a commendable endeavor and a benchmark for other muni's to follow. Not sure from who or where the private money came from, but in major metro cities some deep pocketed guys/companies I would hope can see the benefit and pony up and create the value for the general public.
Some of the reno's I have heard discussed in LA or Chicago on here and others simply didn't get to a realistic stage as the ask was too much $ wise, or they didn't have an influential pied piper. I don't think it matters if it is a muni or just public access, increasing public golf for all adds value to society.
Great points Jeff.
Justification for this model can be viewed as a Win - Win. If an entity or group of entities is significantly successful in a community, it would be logical to insure the vibrancy of that community. Play grounds, theaters and other activities such as golf enhance quality of life to retain and attract talent, customers etc.
It appears that Houston Memorial is an example of successful implementation of that model. The deal components and participants seemed to have managed to strike a harmonious bureaucratic and functional design balance.
One can assume it wasn’t as easy to structure but while on-site, my sense of appreciation and goodwill from the locals was universal. They were really fun rounds with an eclectic collection of golf partners. However they pulled it off it is working.
One day, a family member, a new ish golfer made her first birdie ever on 18. Drinks and dinner.
I generally reserve as a single walker and on one of the days I played, three of our foursome were non-residents. To a person, our first stop post round… er, second stop post round was the golf shop to inquire if replays were available that afternoon or a fresh walk was open the following day. One of the guys changed a flight when we confirmed a late afternoon gap in the tee sheet. The woman in our group called her (?BF/Husband?)
We heard his name was Dave. She informed Dave he was on his own for dinner as she was taking another lap with us.
We had only 18 holes of shared history but went back out together for a truncated twilight as if this was our regular weekly game.
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