Thanks for the interest guys. Yes, I will be giving a short presentation at the Winter Conferenence where I will go more in-depth into the whole project, and if you do a search I have posted a good deal of information on here before.
As for why we didn't choose Gil, I was not part of the search committee so can't say exactly why he wasn't considered.
Gil is a wonderful architect, and yes at the time he was working on French Creek, Appleebrook, and even involved with Gulph Mills. The only fully completed work by Gil in the Philadelphia area at the time was Inniscrone, and even know a lot of us at GCA love the place, their are a lot of people in the area that had/have concerns about the place. I know a lot of people at the club were favorably impressed with Glen Mills, although Bobby asked the membership to please not consider Glen Mills because it was an very difficult piece of property to work with. Around the time we started looking into things Bobby also had been doing his "This Old Course" feature for the University of Florida course that ran in Sports Illustrated.
As far as cost is concerned, I can say fairly certainly that Bobby's costs were not any cheaper than Gil's, it was most likely the other way around.
Yes, Scot Sherman was the on-site guy and I believe during construction Bobby was there about everyother week for a day and a half or so, as he would fly in on Thursday then go down to Virginia where they were working on the Deane Beaman project. Scot is a young guy in the industry that really "gets it" and we were lucky to have him on sight as much as he was.
Our situation was a very delicate one. We had a good golf course already, so that amount of work that needed to be done was negotiable. The major factors that needed to be dealt with were the trees, which we were overgrown with and causing the turf to be very unhealthy and the greens which were built incorrectly 50 years ago.
I have not spoken or heard from one person that has played the course before and played it now that were not favorably impressed by the work Bobby and Scot have done, the compliments have been overwhelming. One thing that I thought was really interesting and proof how much Bobby and Scot "get it" is how two of the holes were actually dramatically shortened to add strategy in an age where everyone is looking to ADD length.
I will be happy to anser anyone elses questions and will be at the conference in February but if anyone is in Philadelphia and would like to see/or play the place please let me know, I'd be happy to show anyone around. I've had some GCA'ers out and they have all really enjoyed it.
Jason Mandel