New Doak Course- The Canyons

[bakerg]

http://www.cybergolf.com/region.asp?id=1280&placeID=3


Doak Now Designing Colorado Course
Heralded architect, Tom Doak of Renaissance Golf Design, is now in the process of designing The Canyons, a new semiprivate golf club in Castle Rock, Colo. The project’s backer, Lee Alpert of the Alpert Company, hired Doak in February 2003 after playing one of the architect’s most heralded works, Pacific Dunes in Bandon, Ore.  
 
“He’s a hands-on golf enthusiast,” Alpert told the Douglas County News-Press. “Before accepting the job, he met with us several times to make sure we’d do justice to his design. We played a round with him at Pacific Dunes in Oregon, which Golf Digest rated the No. 2 course in the nation. He really keeps with the contour of the land.”  
 
In continuing his minimalist philosophy, Doak promises to minimize site grading at The Canyons to only several hundred thousand yards. “My favorite parts of the property are the sandy washes,” said Doak. “We’re going to incorporate them as natural hazards, like the ones they had in the 1920s. The course is going to have a rugged look to fit with the land. The golf greens will be 150-200 feet wide, instead of 300 feet wide, so water resources can be conserved.”  
 
The golf course is part of an eponymous 3,500-acre development north of Crowfoot Valley Road in Castle Rock. The Alpert Co. is slated to ask the Parker Water and Sanitation District to annex the site. If that request is approved, the Alpert Company will give nonrenewable, underground water rights in the Denver Basin aquifers to Parker Water. The water district will build a reservoir, using mostly well water, north of The Canyons.  
 
The project was approved in 2001, with a rezoning of the site approved in 2000 after several years of contentious public hearings for a previous project – called Happy Canyon – on the property. Alpert Company recently assumed the development rights after acquiring the acreage.  
 
The large-scale project involves 1,500 homes on the north section of the site; these units will be platted after Doak designs the course. Another 1,000 homes on the southeast side of Crowfoot Valley Road have not been platted. The project also involves various recreational and commercial amenities. If all goes well, work on the golf course may begin this summer and be open for play in 2005.  

[Doug Wright]

Whoa! Hadn't heard about this but looking forward to seeing it. I've been in that area and as I recall it has some excellent terrain for a golf course, rolling with the washes mentioned. For those of you who know the area the location is east of I-25 a few miles east of Castle Pines GC and CC. Glad to see Lee Alpert's platting the houses AFTER Tom does the layout, which is often a problem for GC designers I'm told.

FYI there's another course going in further east of this, a private, high end club on land between The Pinery GC and the town of Parker east of Parker Road. Jay Morrish probably the architect. Still raising $$, not designed yet.

Who said there's a recession in Colorado?  

All The Best,

[Tom_Doak]

"Several hundred thousand yards??"  Where did they get that?  Actually it looks like we'll move about 50,000 yards if the land planner doesn't make me change the layout from what's on paper right now.

Construction will not start until October at the earliest, and more likely not until spring 2004.

The happiest people about this project are Jim Urbina and Eric Iverson.  They both live about 20 minutes from the site, so they can work from home for a while, and have somewhere to play golf when it's finished.

[Brad Swanson]

Doug Wright and I had the pleasure of walking a large chunk of The Canyons future layout with Tom, Jim, and Eric earlier this week.  It was quite a learning experience (especially on how to avoid being charged by a cow).  From what I can remember, the front 9 plays in a loop, and (starting on the 4th hole or so) up a beautiful wide and deep valley floor.  The back 9 plays down to an area with some very wide washes which will come into play on a majority of the holes and finishes with a strong uphill par 5.  Although I haven't played many of Tom's designs, Doug tells me that the land is somewhat similar to Apache Stronghold in topography/vegetation, etc.  I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product, but won't likely be living here anymore when its done to see it firsthand.  


Cheers,
Brad Swanson  

[A_Clay_Man]

Brad- I hope that bombshellis a positive for your future endeavors. I was just recently at Apache and the land was dimpled with natural mounding which really helped single out the holes and made for true serenity. Is this site comprable to that and did they know where the houses are supose to go? and are they close?

Tom- Your statement about changes to your plan makes me wonder what type of negotiating posture do you take in a situation like that? Do you or can you have clauses that kick in penalties(fees) for each minutia of change that gets imposed after a certain point? I guess the other end of the spectrum is like dealing with the teamsters...whaa'd youz gonna dooo about it?  

[Bill_McBride]

Tom, do the washes lend themselves to some George Thomas Riviera / LACC type holes?  Sounds like interesting terrain if it's similar to Apache Stronghold.   The washes and ravines there were used to great advantage, really fun golf course.  Looking forward to seeing the Canyons in the future.

[Tom_Doak]

Bill:  The washes remind me more of LACC than Apache Stronghold in their scale and depth ... I think golfers will often try to play their balls out of the hazard, which is good because the hazards may come into play on something like 20 shots out of the regulation 35 or 36.

Adam:  It looks like our routing is now set.  The land planners haven't really pushed around any of our golf holes, but the client did make the executive decision to separate the two loops of nine, which keeps the course from being easily walkable, in order to put some of the course in view of some of the future development.  (Of course, it is rare that a project has so much dedicated open space that it's even possible to consider a plan that isn't surrounded by housing.)

Could I envision some kind of mechanism so the client wouldn't "interfere" with my routing decisions?  I can't imagine how, exactly; I'd sure come across as a prima donna if I tried.  About all I can do is raise my design fees to deal with the additional work created by surrounding developments, and hope that they'll listen to me more because they're paying me so much.