The $40 million figure can't be correct especially to get JMP as the architect. I would place them at best a 3rd tier golf architect firm and can't imagine them charging very much.
www.jmpgolf.com
Here is an article about the costs, from the Pleasanton Weekly Online Edition, March 4, 2005. To cut to the chase, says costs are already $38.5 million, expected to go over $40M...
"A 'bargain' at $40 million - maybe
With the opening of the Callippe Preserve municipal golf course and trail system delayed again and construction costs rising, City Manager Nelson Fialho has taken "the bull by the horns" (his words) to stop the financial bleeding and complete the project as quickly as possible. Public Works Director Rob Wilson, who inherited the project when he was hired two years ago, has moved out of City Hall and into a construction trailer to handle day-to-day, on-site activities involving Ferma Corp., the general contractor and subcontractors. With 30 years of experience, including project management, construction inspection and as chief engineer for the city of Fremont before taking the Pleasanton job, he is the right man to work directly with Ferma supervisors, cutting the time consumed in phone calls, voice mails and facsimiles of landscape, grading and construction plans and changes. Fialho, named City Manager last October, was right in moving Wilson, substituting Assistant Public Works Director Scott Baker to handle city engineering and public works responsibilities so that Wilson can focus on getting the golf course project done.
Time is critical because, starting in November, Pleasanton taxpayers must start paying down the first of $25.3 million in bonds that were sold last year to finance the project. It was hoped that golfers, at an estimated $45 or more in green fees, would be helping to cover much of the bond payments by playing on Callippe last fall and through all of this year, generating additional revenue at the course's driving range and through equipment rentals and purchases at the clubhouse, which was completed last year. But that hasn't happened as opening day kept slipping, from early 2004 to mid-year to year's end and, most recently to this July. As seeding slowed and then stopped, Ferma's subcontractor Foresgren walked off the job. Ferma recently hired a new subcontractor, Continental Golf, which has promised more manpower and a faster turnaround on hydroseeding and mechanized seeding on fairways still without turf. Even so, Wilson estimates that work won't be completed before June, weather permitting, and that it will take at least six more months for the turf to develop before golfers and their carts can start play.
Total costs for the project so far are pegged at $38.5 million, making it one of the most expensive 18-hole municipal golf courses in the state. Fialho and Wilson are expected to seek additional funds from the City Council later this month that will put the project over the $40 million mark. But then Callippe Preserve is not your typical city-owned golf course. The course, itself, will occupy only 145 acres of the 576-acre Happy Valley site that the city annexed in 2002. Thirty-seven planned custom homes will occupy 20 acres with five acres for streets. City-owned open space, that will include three miles of public trails and equestrian paths alongside the course take another 173 acres, with a 107-acre easement purchased by the city to satisfy environmental requirements available for cattle grazing, but not open to the public. The cost of the project also included building a 24-foot-tall, 655,000-gallon water tank high above Happy Valley to provide fire protection and potable water throughout the site, as well as sewer and water lines under Alisal Street. That street, itself, was dug out and rebuilt as part of the project cost. Most important, the pristine rolling hills that comprise this newly annexed acreage preserve the open space at the city's southwest corner, sparing it from apartments, high-density housing and major arterial streets once contemplated for the acreage. The 576 acres will not only contain the golf course, trails and custom homes, but mostly acres of open space no longer available for further development.
There would appear to be many benefits to Pleasanton from this project, when we finally get it done. But until we know why the cost over-runs occurred, and how much they cost, we won't know if Callippe is a good deal for Pleasanton. Stay tuned."