La Quinta - Arnold Palmer knows the construction window for the SilverRock Resort golf course is tight. But Palmer, the designer of the city-owned course, isn't willing to sacrifice quality just for an on-time January opening.
"I just don't want them to rush too fast into the whole program," Palmer said after a one-hour tour of his design Tuesday. "Sure, it would be nice to get it right on time, but if we don't, don't panic. The golf course will be ready. We just need to get everything situated."
Palmer, city officials and course builders all believe the SilverRock course will be ready for a mid-January opening. That would be the end of a whirlwind 11-month construction process for the centerpiece of the redevelopment project designed to put the city into the resort golf and hotel business.
Two hotels, retail and commercial businesses are part of the long-term SilverRock plan, while the PGA Tour's Bob Hope Chrysler Classic has already agreed to move to the course in 2006.
"It's going to be wonderful. Everything is headed in the right direction," Palmer said after the tour. "The golf course will be good."
The SilverRock course is one of seven courses under construction in the desert, all scheduled to open between November and March. That will bring the number of courses in the desert to 120, or more courses than 14 states including Nevada and Hawaii.
Six of the desert's existing courses are Palmer designs, including three in La Quinta.
Palmer was in the desert Tuesday to look at two courses his company has designed, each of which will debut in the Hope tournament in 2006. After touring SilverRock Resort in the morning, Palmer and his team headed to the Berger Foundation course on the north side of Interstate 10 near Cook Street in Palm Desert.
Since the Berger Foundation course won't open for play until the fall of 2005, the urgency Tuesday was centered on SilverRock.
"That's the area that I'm a little cautious on," Palmer said of the timetable for a January opening. "I just need to see some things get done here now, get cleaned up around the edges."
"The foundation, the bulk work is in and good. It drains well. It grows grass properly," said Erik Larsen, the senior designer for the SilverRock project for Palmer Course Design. "All the hazards are there, big and bold. You can tell the playability and strategy of the course, the beauty of it. It's all intact. It's just finishing the edges. And that will take time and detailed work."
Palmer, Larsen and La Quinta city officials toured a course Tuesday that had grass green and growing on the south end of the project near Avenue 54. Toward the north end of the project, near Avenue 52, grass has yet to be put down as some minor shaping of holes continues and irrigation pipe is installed.
Construction officials say the entire course will be growing, either with sprigs of Bermuda grass or layers of sod, by mid-September. Other work left on the course includes ensuring the course drains properly, finishing work on the renovation of the old Ahmanson ranch house into a temporary clubhouse and even potentially adding a alternate green on the 15th hole.
The project has been more extensive than first envisioned. At a groundbreaking in January, Palmer suggest about 1 million cubic yards of dirt would be moved to shape the course. As earth-moving nears an end, nearly 2 million cubic yards have been shifted on the site. More than 350 miles of irrigation pipe will be used to bring water to the 130 acres of turf and 20 acres of lakes. Still, city officials are confident the course's $10.3 million budget, as well as the $94 million budget for the entire project, will be met.
While many of the holes on the front nine have no grass, Palmer sees enough to know the course he and Larsen designed is coming to reality at the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains.
"You have to play it or walk it, the whole thing, which we pretty much did today, but I can't imagine anything that would be major that we would have to change. right now," Palmer said. "But if we do, we'll change it. It's that simple."
Source: The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.)