Big city, big community

With the Chicago skyline in view, among the crowded city streets and buildings, sits Harborside International Golf Center. Maintaining a golf course in a highly populated area atop reclaimed land isn’t ideal for a superintendent. But caring for courses in urban areas isn’t new for superintendent Jake Ronchi.

Ronchi has spent most of his life in a city. He went to school in Philadelphia, worked in New York and Chicago in college, and found his way to Harborside in 2021. Harborside is a public 36-hole facility residing in southeast Chicago, home to the Port Course and the Starboard Course. The Dick Nugent-designed courses opened in 1999.

Maintaining and staffing a course in the city can make it difficult to hire staff with turf backgrounds and experience. But Ronchi finds that to be the most fulfilling aspect. Harborside’s staff is comprised of employees who are experts in their own areas, and the staff is homegrown from the southeast side of the city. Southeast Chicago is a predominately industrial area, and was the railroad capital of the country in the 1800s.

When it comes to needing repair work done, machinery isn’t sent back to manufacturers but instead to local shops. The relationships they have built with the community are important to them. As Ronchi says, “We want to go South Side first on just about everything.”

Ronchi’s team members each carry passions that they go all-in for outside of their work. The mechanics enjoy street racing, and the assistant superintendents and irrigation techs spend a lot of time fishing locally.

The people in the community have also proved to be a big passion for superintendent and general manager Steven Shavel at Washington Golf Course in Newburgh Heights, Ohio. Found just south of downtown Cleveland and part of the Cleveland Metroparks, Washington is a public 9-hole, par-29 facility. 

Shavel’s passion and job includes introducing golf and turf maintenance to children. Washington partners with First Tee-Cleveland, running programs for kids to learn the game of golf and in 2024, the Woodworth Activity Center opened on the property.

New to Washington this year is First Green, a program introducing the career of course maintenance to kids. 

“Their whole mission is also to go out and teach life skills through the game of golf, and go into the community, local schools and kids to show what not only Washington is about, but the game of golf,” Shavel says. “I would say it’s a very big portion of my job, to actually grow the game and get kids interested in golf, whether it’s on the player side or the actual maintenance side.”

As a part of First Tee, Washington frequently partners with Cleveland STEP, a program for Cleveland Water Department employees’ children in sixth through ninth grade. For their science section, students visit Washington to learn about golf course maintenance and turf.

Shavel hires seasonal workers each April, and local teens often apply. One seasonal employee, Drew Zubin, has been working at Washington for more than five summers. “It’s just great to have folks that not only like to golf, but understand what Washington is all about,” Shavel says. 

Working in an urban area can also bring soil and turf challenges, as most sit on reclaimed land. At Washington, the land that is now predominantly flat used to be more of a valley. The grounds were previously a dumping site for local steel mills, and a location to dump unusable and destroyed bricks. 

The biggest challenge for the turf at the Cleveland course is the soil construction — or lack thereof, Shavel says. Parts of the course still scale the steel mills, and the soil found there is mostly made of brick, rock and slag. “Not the most optimal conditions to grow turf on,” he adds.

At Harborside, location affects course conditions on the irrigation side. Harborside is the only golf course that draws water directly from Lake Michigan through Lake Calumet. The water is full of bicarbonates, making it potentially dangerous for the turf. Chemical inputs and overwatering must be monitored to prevent damage. Lake Michigan also poses the enemy of zebra mussels. When pulling the water, their eggs and larvae can get into the pipes. If the irrigation system isn’t being used as frequently, and the eggs are present, pipes can clog and lead to serious issues for the system.

“Pulling from such a diverse ecological system with Lake Michigan brings us some unique challenges, just to our property,” Ronchi says.

Challenges for urban courses can come from the environment — and also from the surrounding community. Being located among neighborhoods and housing in the Cleveland area brings the challenge of noise ordinances for Shavel and his team. Gas and diesel-powered equipment are not permitted before 6 a.m. Because of these restrictions, Washington is slowly shifting from gas to battery-powered equipment. Going fully electric helps the course eliminate conversations with unhappy neighbors about noise. 

“If I’m out there at 6 o’clock in the morning, even though we’re able to be out there mowing, people come out and say, ‘Hey, can you go start somewhere else on the golf course?’”

Working at a municipal course is something Baylands Golf Links superintendent Patrick Tuttle thinks every superintendent should experience.

Baylands is in Palo Alto, California, between San Francisco and San Jose. It is an 18-hole municipal golf course. Originally designed by William F. Bell and opened in 1956, the course was previously known as Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course. The course was later redesigned by Forrest Richardson, renamed Baylands Golf Links and reopened in 2018.

Before starting at Baylands, Tuttle previously worked at Palo Alto Hills Golf and Country Club, San Francisco Golf Club and Mendo Country Club. “You just have appreciation for different things,” Tuttle says. “We have a smaller budget, and you have to be the one that’s creative with things.”

Being a public course in the city means these facilities could average thousands more rounds a year than a private course. Tuttle says the California course gets more than 60,000 rounds a year. “I would say it’s more challenging to manage a course when there’s more golf,” he says.

With such high round numbers, the odds of someone who has never played the game teeing off at an urban municipal course are high. Some might assume this could make superintendents fearful of the turf being damaged or divots remaining unfixed.

But for Tuttle? “I love it,” he says. “I love increasing awareness.”

Shavel’s excitement for new golfers comes from seeing the younger generations find their way to the course. According to the National Golf Foundation’s 2025 Graffis Report, there were more youth golfers in 2024 than any year since 2006, with 3.7 million participants.

“It's really great,” Shavel says, “to see more of a younger population coming out.”

Kelsie Horner is Golf Course Industry’s assistant editor.