Creating an oasis

Arnold Palmer Golf Course Design and Landscapes Unlimited faced significant challenges when they began designing and constructing The Classic at NorthStar in Palm Desert, Calif. Dust storms cost $3 million to control; an ugly desert needed major transformation that cost $5 million in landscaping with a requirement to move 3 million cubic yards of dirt; and the PGA Tour, which will host the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic on the site next year was a demanding client.

The Berger Foundation committed $36 million and donated 240 acres of land to the building of The Classic at NorthStar, which will host the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

“When I first saw the property I almost cried,” says Vicki Martz, senior golf course architect with Palmer Design. “There was no redeeming feature, and it was flat with a 1-percent slope.”

When Bill Kubly, c.e.o. of Landscapes Unlimited, was first introduced to the  project he was amazed at the commitment the H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation was making to the Palm Desert community. The foundation committed $36 million to the project, donated 240 acres and gifted the golf course to the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, with the purpose of raising money for underprivileged children and the needy in the Coachella Valley.

“They had put together a team including some of the best land planners, engineers, landscape architects and golf course architects in the business, so I knew that Landscapes Unlimited needed to be a part of this great project,” Kubly says.

The course, which is seeded and sodded, is scheduled to open in November.

“We think it’s going to be a spectacular venue, especially for television and the gallery and anyone interested in coming out to a Tour event,” says John Foster, a member of the board of directors of the Hope Classic and president of West Coast Turf.

“People feel we’re going to be one of the top-rated courses in the Coachella Valley and probably in the U.S.,” says Douglass Vance, vice president of the Berger Foundation. “Various people, including the PGA, are excited about the quality of this course.”

The presence of the Berger Foundation adds unique dimensions such as:
• The Bob Hope Chrysler Classic becomes the only charity-owned tournament. Foster says the 46-year-old Hope Classic has given away more than $1.5 million per year for the last decade or so;
• It joins the Masters at Augusta National and TPC at Sawgrass, host of the Players Championship, as the only tournament-owned venues;
• It magnifies the commitment of golf to charity and comes in the wake of the PGA Tour surpassing the $1 billion plateau in giving; and
• It supplies enough financial support to turn Palm Desert’s down-and-out desert into a Tour venue. Besides the 240-acre property, the site includes 240 acres the Berger Foundation plans to sell for a hotel, villa sites and a high-tech industrial campus.

“This venue will help make the tournament more effective to operate, and, in the long run, we will own the public-fee course, which will generate income for the charity,” Foster says. “This project helps us raise money better and also gives us a stable home. Basically, we play at the wishes of courses we are visiting. This gift has a stabilizing, long-term effect.”

Dusty bottoms
The major impediment to construction was new dust-control legislation imposed on projects in the region. This meant a full-time environmental observer, David Linngren, had to be assigned to the project.

Alternate routes to the greens were created so golfers don't have to go for the green in two.

“This is the first project in the Coachella Valley where you have to be certified for dust control,” says Landscapes Unlimited project superintendent Brian Vitek, who earned certification through a course offered by the Air Quality Management District. “We’re on call 24-7, and I’d say we have gone above and beyond the requirements.”

Before construction began, Landscapes Unlimited erected a 6-foot-high chain link fence with windscreen around the four- to five-mile periphery of the property. Since construction started in January 2004, water trucks with boom sprayers have operated seven days a week, wetting down the sand.

“We constantly run water trucks right next to every piece of equipment that is operating,” Vitek says. “By law, we can’t generate any dust. During the high season, we had 20 water trucks running to maintain the site at the condition it needed to be. They zigzag back and forth with wide boom sprayers, keeping the roads and any other place we’re going to travel, wet.”

In some areas, Vitek used chemical stabilizers, which glue the soil in place.
The dust-control chore was made more difficult because of high winds in the region. Whenever the wind escalated, all work was required to stop until the wind subsided. Indeed, the winds were so strong at times that they changed the contours on three golf holes under construction and blew sand back into cored-out bunkers.

The frustrations of starting and stopping the construction because of dust was something Landscapes Unlimited wasn’t accustomed to.

“NorthStar lies in what is called the ‘wind tunnel’ directly north of I-10 here in Palm Desert, and the Berger Foundation made it clear from the start the project needed to slow down the dust, not accelerate it,” Kubly says.

Dust control was a huge portion of the budget.

“It astounded me,” Martz says. “When you break down the cost, it was all these ancillary items – watering every day, wind fences, installing drip irrigation – that were astronomical.”

While operating the water trucks in tandem with other equipment, Martz and Landscapes Unlimited worked with landscape architect Ken Alperstein of Pinnacle Design Co., transplanting 4,800 pine trees and almost 30,000 shrubs around the golf course.

“We have 15 miles of irrigation pipe,” says Vitek. “Each shrub and tree gets a hard plastic pipe – not poly pipe – and a small drip emitter brought up to it. The pipes are laid 12 inches deep. It’s all hand work, pick and shovel. You can’t use a trencher because they’re so close together.”

Species and rain
The dust control overshawdowed the collaboration of the principles of the project with the Coachella Valley Preserve.

The Classic at NorthStar

Location: Palm Desert, Calif. Yardages: 7,474; 7,076; 6,487; 5,965; 5,414 Par: 72 Acreage of golf course: 220 Acres of fairway: 45 Acres of the entire project site: 470 Average size of greens: 6,200 square feet Tees: Tifgreen Bermudagrass Greens: Tifdwarf Bermudagrass Fairways: TifSport Bermudagrass Roughs: DeAnza zoysiagrass Irrigation system: RainBird Cirrus Pump station: Flowtronex Course superintendent: Dennis Orsborn Architect: Arnold Palmer Golf Course Design Builder: Landscapes Unlimited Owner: Bob Hope Chrysler Classic (donated by Berger Foundation) Total cost of project: $36 million Construction started: January 2004 Construction ended: July 2005

“We were very environmentally sensitive and gave the preserve a 50-foot buffer zone to the north property line to secure the safety of the endanger species, which include the fringe toad lizard and milk vetch plant,” Vance says.

Also complicating construction were the drenching rainstorms Southern California receives, which courses must be able to accommodate. Because of this, Landscapes Unlimited built a lake system and created large, deep swales throughout the project to handle drainage.

“We have some strange relationships of greens to water that we normally don’t want to have,” Martz says. “Mr. Palmer prefers a green right down on the water. At NorthStar, we have one hole like that, but the rest that are next to water are up in the air to accommodate these flood flows.”

Because of the elevated greens, the winds and the amount of water on the course, play is going to be challenging, so wide fairways and alternative routes to the greens were created so golfers don’t have to go for the green in two, according to Martz.

While several sets of tees will make the course enjoyable for all levels of golfers 51 weeks a year, NorthStar’s permanent relationship with the PGA Tour on that 52nd week made for an interesting collaboration between Palmer Design, Hope Classic officials and Steve Wenzloff, director of design for PGA Tour Design Services.

“We were out there with many, many people from the Tour – tournament people, rules officials, design people …,” Martz says.

First, Foster and the Hope Classic officials requested the course be as long as possible so the layout would hold its own for many years to come. The result: a 7,536-yard distance from the tips.

Second, extraordinary spectator areas were paramount.

“We were looking for something superior when it came to viewing and being fan-friendly,” Foster says. “Not only does NorthStar have good access, right off the fairway, but it will have spectacular viewing areas where you can look down on two or three holes.”

Martz says more than 3 million yards of dirt were moved.

“When you create large ravines through the course, you have a lot of dirt to work with,” she says. “There are wonderful spectator mounds. The course emulates the mountains around it and is visually very pretty. You would never dream that it was once flat.”

Tremendous acreage is set aside for spectator amenities to enhance the tournament – from entertainment to food concession and viewing areas.

Third, the team decided to move away from the desert look prevalent in the area and transplanted pine trees and desert willow, with pine straw accenting the pine trees.

“I was worried when we decided to do this that the grand scale of this place would make the pine trees look like sticks, but the Berger Foundation budget committed to the landscaping has blown me away,” Martz says. “With Ken Alperstein, we created a theme of rocky streams, rock outcroppings and pine trees.”

Vital to the success of the course is its maintenance. NorthStar golf course superintendent Dennis Orsborn, a long-time veteran of the desert, is overseeing the Tifdwarf Bermudagrass greens, 328 Bermudagrass tees, Tifsport fairways and drought-tolerant zoysiagrass roughs.

Landscapes Unlimited sprigged 95 acres of Bermudagrass and laid 40 acres of sod as well as creating 35 acres of lakes, building 14 bridges, forming 250,000 square feet of bunkers, and punctuating the entire property with dramatic elevation changes.

In the end, Foster says an all-star cast was assembled for NorthStar.

“Arnold Palmer is a perfect fit,” he says. “We have a long history with Arnold. He won the tournament five times and lives in the community part of the year.

“We know Landscapes and their reputation and wanted to make sure we got a good job, so we were happy when the Berger Foundation decided to use them,” Foster adds, noting Kubly also lives in the community part of the year.

And Troon Golf, a well-known golf course management company, will operate the facility.

All of this is fitting for a tournament that in four years will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

“What is magical is that this significant gift from the Berger Foundation is one that will keep on giving,” Foster says. GCN

Mark Leslie is a freelance writer from Monmouth, Maine. He can be reached at gripfast@ctel.net.