“Johnny Miller and I have designed a course that all players will enjoy as well as a superior practice facility that should draw families from the community,” explained co-designer Fred Bliss. “We feel that in time Metropolitan Golf Links will be considered one of the best public venues anywhere.”
While it took nearly three years to complete the 7,045-yard course, that hardly begins to explain how this course came about as a critical part of solving an extremely complex issue for the city of Oakland.
The old Lew Galbraith Golf Course provided the first golf experience for thousands in the Bay Area during its 30 years of existence. But the course was built over a landfill that was mandated by the EPA to be closed down properly in 1992. This closure process called for capping the old landfill with a one-foot thick clay cap.
The city took the initiative to tackle two problems at once. Along with the need to deal with the old landfill, the Port of Oakland was preparing to dredge the Oakland estuary in order to bring larger ships into the bustling port. While the city was in need of capping material, the port was in need of a place to dump dredge material. The Galbraith site became the solution.
The city also hoped to bring golf back to the site to replace the Galbraith course so a concerted effort to develop a plan with the city, the port and Johnny Miler Design was initiated. The plan called for the dredge material to be put on the Galbraith site and then graded to the contours provided by the designers for the golf course.
Once the site was sufficiently prepared, Oakland Golf LLC, a partnership between CourseCo Inc. and several Bay Area business partners, including former Oakland Raider Raymond Chester and real estate investor Ned Spieker, would then build and manage the new course. But getting the site to that stage was a monumental task.
Engineers estimated that 1.2 million yards would come from the dredging and the material was delivered to the site in a slurry form.
“A large dike was built around the site and the slurry was placed over the 120 acres. This slurry took six years to dry out, and the remaining material included heavy clay and sand. The bottom of the bay now covers the site,” explained CourseCo head agronomist Ray Davies, CGCS.
The dredging was then “worked,” as clay and sand were separated so the clay material could be used first for the cap. Two feet of clay material were placed and then compacted down to one foot to create this critical cap.
As CourseCo prepared for construction, the first of several problems arose. The initial estimates of the amount of material brought from the estuary turned out to be flawed. It was thought that around 320,000 cubic yards of sand material would be available for the course, but only 112,000 cubic yards were on site.
“It was easy to see how the estimates could be wrong. The top priority for the port was to make sure that the capping and closure of the landfill was completed to the satisfaction of the EPA. But the contractor also then had to shape the site to the specification for the golf course,” Davies said.
When CourseCo began construction in 2001, only 30 acres were ready to work on. The port had to provide more material for capping and for shaping to satisfy their end. This caused a series of delays and the port also needed a new contractor to complete the initial work.
It took three years to build the course, and throughout the project a host of problems confronted the construction team. Because the cap layer was so thin in places, laying out drainage and irrigation so as not to interfere with each other dictated careful planning. Builders had to figure out how to grow grass on soil of high salt and sodium content.
“This project just became a fascinating agronomic and construction task to rework so many issues,” Davies said.
The course is planted with perennial rye fairways and Dominant Extreme bentgrass for the greens. During the grow-in process the trick has been to water the course heavily enough to leach out the salts while maintaining a good growing medium. More than 20 miles of subsurface drainage lines were installed to manage the flushing phase and ensure dry, firm turf in all seasons. To add to the salty challenge, the course uses reclaimed water for irrigation as well as some well water. Superintendent Gary Ingram, CGCS, works to finds the perfect level of watering to make the course flourish.
It has been estimated that the cost of the landfill closure was nearly $55 million and the cost of the golf course itself was nearly $14 million. But even with these costs, it was significantly less than if the Port of Oakland had to haul the dredged material away.
Now, nine years after losing their local course, Oakland residents can return to golf on this revamped Galbraith location, even though few will understand how intricate a project the creation of the Metropolitan Golf Links actually was. The city now has a first-class golf venue available to them at affordable rates. But Davies said CourseCo and the crews at Metro will thrive on the satisfaction of surmounting the numerous challenges in order to bring back a golf course that will truly be an integral part of the community.
Explore the May 2003 Issue
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