From glum to green

Sometime during the fall, John Sanford, Gary Kessener and Dan Bastille should heave a collective sigh of relief that will be heard throughout New England.

Sanford is the course architect, Kessener the construction superintendent and Bastille the maintenance superintendent at suburban Boston’s Granite Links Golf Club at Quarry Hills, which is scheduled to open the last nine of its 27 holes when the project, first proposed almost 15 years ago, draws to a close in late 2005.

“It’s going to be great to basically just worry about mowing the grass,” Bastille says.

From the start
Developers Chick Geilich and Bill O’Connell first approached the towns of Quincy and Milton with a proposal to build a golf course and soccer and baseball fields on top of three landfills and numerous abandoned rock quarries on a 480-acre site that straddled the two communities seven miles from downtown Boston.

The average size of the greens at Granite Links at Quarry Hills is 6,500 square feet. The greens feature L-93 bentgrass.

The municipalities signed 50-year lease agreements with the developers to close the landfills and then build and operate the facilities.

Needing massive amounts of material to close the landfills and construct the course, the developers negotiated a public/private partnership with the Massachusetts Highway Department’s Central Artery/Tunnel Group. It called for delivery of more than 12 million tons of excavate (as many as 1,200 truckloads daily) from the Big Dig, a nearby highway project designed to improve automobile traffic flow through Boston. The tipping fees paid by the state for the excavate would help pay for the golf project.

The site overlooks the city skyline to the north, Boston Harbor and the islands to the east, and the 30,000-acre Blue Hills Reservation wilderness park to the west and south. After years of negotiations, excavate deliveries and course construction started in the late 1990s. The first nine holes opened in 2003, the second nine in 2004, and the final nine should be ready for limited play in the fall of 2005.

A piecemeal plan
The developers selected Sanford, a Jupiter, Fla.-based designer who grew up in Massachusetts, as the architect of the $100-million-plus project in the mid-1990s.

From a design standpoint, the biggest challenge was having to build holes piecemeal during long periods of time, according to Sanford. On most sites, an architect can rough-in a hole, stand on the tee, look at the bunkers and green complex and make changes to fit the eye. Not at Granite Links, where material-delivery and closure schedules for various portions of the landfills meant different parts of the course had to be built at different times.

“We were never able to build an entire hole at once, stand on a rough-shaped tee and look at the fairways and features all the way to the green,” Sanford says. “It was always build a tee here and a green there and then come back later and fill in the gaps. Everything had to be clay capped in areas and laid out by the engineers before we could actually build golf holes. As far as the state and regulatory agencies were concerned, closing the landfill was primary and building the golf course secondary.”

Because he couldn’t go back and make changes, Sanford had to stick to his grading and strategy plans and trust the team’s initial instincts when it came to course design and finished grading.

“We had one shot at it,” he says. “The permitting didn’t allow us to make any real grade changes. All things considered, I’m happy with the way the course has turned out. A lot of the credit goes to Kessener, Bastille and their guys.”

Layers upon layers
Dealing with the amount of fill and the layering of four different types of material was another considerable design challenge. The material that came out of the Big Dig was placed down first; and it was shaped to match the finish grade, minus five feet. Into that final five feet went three more layers: an impenetrable clay cap 12 to 18 inches deep to keep water from getting into the former landfill; a 2-foot sacrificial layer consisting of glacial till, river sediment and whatever else could be found above the cap that had to be shaped to match the final grade and cover the drainage and irrigation infrastructure; and a foot of clean, sandy topsoil to serve as the growing medium.

Finding sufficient ground to lay down the massize amounts of fill material, roughly 10 million cubic yards, was a major challenge.

“In Florida, for instance, we usually just shape the native material then grass it because we have pretty decent sandy material,” Sanford says. “Worst-case scenario, in Massachusetts or elsewhere, you shape the subgrade, cap it with topsoil, and you’re done. What made this challenging architecturally is that every time you put on another layer it tends to melt the features. We had to visualize the historic fill grade and vertically exaggerate it. That way, as we layered over it, we would still have the final shape we wanted, while keeping the depth of each layer consistent.

Maintenance superintendent Don Bastille tests water constantly for nutrients and the methane gas produced underground by the closed landfill.

“There was a lot of visualization that Kessener, the shapers and I had to put into the base-grade shaping and clay capping because we knew we had to put more layers on top and still come out with good-looking bunkers, greens, tee complexes and fairway contouring. Kessener has a good eye. We spent a lot of time talking about how we needed to exaggerate the features in the historic fill  to end up with what we wanted, realizing each additional layer would melt and flatten out, which can make you lose edges, slopes and features.”

Finding sufficient ground to lay down the massive amounts of fill material, roughly 10 million cubic yards, was a major constraint. Piling material that high at such a severe slope eventually would have resulted in peaks with no horizontal ground for golf course holes.

“I went back to my experience in Japan of terracing holes on mountainsides,” says Sanford, who designed Regent Miyazaki Country Club in the Asian island nation. “We cut in terraces, like we did in Japan. Some of the terraces had 90- to 100-foot fills. We filled and created terraces with no more than 5 percent cross slopes off the sides of the landfill. Otherwise the course wouldn’t be playable.”

Preserve areas
While working with the landfills, 16 abandoned rock quarries and normal environmental constraints such as wetlands, Sanford estimated he drew 30 to 40 preliminary 36-hole routings. Two years into the design phase, the Massachusetts Historical Society sent out an archaeologist who discovered seven historical Indian workshop sites covering 30 upland acres.

“Those became preserve areas,” Sanford says. “We had already done more than 30 routings for a 36-hole complex. Suddenly we had to go back to square one because, without those 30 acres, we could not get 36 holes. So we designed 27.”

Space constraints
With 18 holes completed during the first two phases, one of the biggest challenges heading into Phase III was finding space to stockpile materials to complete Phase III.

“In Phase II, we only had 15 acres to clay cap,” Kessener says. “In this last phase, we had 58 acres. We have already capped 50 acres. That third nine looked like it had just a postage-stamp-sized area left for staging materials. We were able to utilize the range, using half [to store materials] at the start of the year and the other half to stage materials throughout the season. Then we built the three holes around the range. The last thing we did was close out the range. We have another six holes left to build and another eight acres left to cap and till. Plus we have another four acres of side slopes left.”

Bastille says they didn’t want to put staging materials on one of the holes they were going to build because they would have ended up moving it three times to get rid of it.

“Kessener was creative and is stocking materials on the last hole we will build and areas where we have already clayed and capped the landfill. Moving materials three to four times makes a project very expensive. This way we’ll take materials off the piles on the last hole as we build the last few holes. When we get to that last hole, there will be a pile of material left that we’ll spread over the final hole.”

Additionally, to help reduce costs, which are usually a challenge on a project of this magnitude, Kessener manufactured his own loam by combining peat from a nearby reservoir with riverbank sand.

“We have produced for about $9 per yard what would have cost us $12 on the street,” he says.

Government intervention
The governing agencies have been a challenge throughout construction, too, especially the state Department of Environmental Protection. Sanford says the project required 74 permits from a variety of government entities.

“We have worked with agencies at the federal, state and local levels,” Kessener says. “Mostly it is the DEP monitoring things pretty closely. Some things are still up for approval. Our engineering firms and consultants spend a lot of time with them. I’ve spent less time with them over the past few years and been able to do what I do best, just build the damn thing.”

On an angle
The most difficult aspect about maintaining the site was growing in and maintaining the 110 acres of steep side slopes.

Growing grass on very sandy soil required using more fertilizer than courses with a loamier growing medium.

“We didn’t sod any of it, so we had to grow it all in,” Bastille says. “We hydroseeded and had guys hand fertilize with those little whirlybirds you put on your chest. There was no way to get any equipment on there because of the slope. We had to fix the washouts and grow-in with the weather. We didn’t want to grow-in during thunderstorm season or the winter. We had that little window in the spring and from Labor Day to Halloween to try to get things growing the best we could. It requires a little more labor. And the side slopes only get mowed twice a year.

“Also, being on a landfill, we have to meet certain organic-content requirements within five years,” Bastille adds. “So we’re taking soil tests all the time to meet that 5-to-6-percent organics target.”

Bastille purchased a special mower that’s designed for steep slopes. The seat tilts, so the operator sits level, even on a 2½ -to-one-foot slope.

“It works great, although it takes awhile to finish mowing,” Bastille says. “We’ll probably have to buy another one. It takes too long to mow 110 acres of side slopes with a machine that is just 92-inches wide.”

Not only is cutting the grass difficult, growing it is tricky, too. Growing grass on very sandy soil required using more fertilizer than courses with a loamier growing medium.

“The benefits of sand are that it drains great, and I don’t have any compaction problems,” Bastille says. “But sand dries out faster, so we have to use more water, especially with high winds.”

Environmentally friendly
Like Sanford and Kessener, Bastille also has had to work closely with government regulators. Erosion control is an ongoing issue on the steep slopes because of wetlands and nearby houses. Bastille is testing the water constantly for nutrients and the methane gas produced underground by the closed landfill. The methane travels from about 100 wells through pipes to two 20-foot flares, where the gas is burned off.

“There are no candy-cane-shaped pipes to vent the methane like there are over a regular landfill,” Bastille says, adding that the candy-cane-shaped pipes aren’t aesthetically pleasing. “All our wells have manhole covers and mounds around them.” GCN

Peter Blais is a freelance writer based in North Yarmouth, Maine. He can be reached at pblais@maine.rr.com.

At a glance

Granite Links Golf Club at Quarry Hills

Location:  Quincy & Milton, Mass.

Course Type:  18-hole semi-private course,
  expanding to 27 holes in late 2005

Course opened:  First nine in 2003 

Yardage:  5,001, 5,547, 6,300 and 6,818
 
Par:  72

Average green size:  6,500 square feet

Number of bunkers: 50

Fairways:  SouthShore, Putter and L-93 bentgrasses

Tees:  L-93 bentgrass

Greens:  L-93 bentgrass

Slope:  141, 134, 126, 135   
  (women’s white), 124

Rating:  73.4, 71.6, 68.5, 73.9
  (women’s white), 70.6

Course construction  
         superintendent:  Gary Kessener

Superintendent:  Daniel Bastille

Developer:  Quarry Hills Associates

Construction Co.:  In-house staff

Architect:  John Sanford
 
Owner:  Quarry Hills Associates