When Bedford Springs Resort’s renovated Old Course opens for play this summer, the focus will be on more than its new bentgrass tees or redesigned fairways. Among the redesigned greens and added bunkers at the historic course in south-central Pennsylvania, a stream that serves many of the holes’ water hazards is fresh from a restoration and poised to boost the course’s economic and ecological value.
|
|
Shobers Run, a tributary to the Juniata River that comes into play on 12 of the course’s holes, was eroding. The course’s designers who were working on the rebuild found out that this was a sign of a larger problem.
“When we started, we were going to do a band-aid fix on the stream, but it seemed that with the scale and magnitude of the erosion of Shobers Run, maybe that approach wasn’t going to fix it at all,” says Jim Nagle, design associate at Forse Design in Hopwood, Pa. “We contacted Mark Gutshall and realized the band-aids we wanted to apply were only temporary.”
Gutshall is president of Lilitz, Pa.-based LandStudies, the environmental consulting and construction company that renovated the stream. Erosion was occurring because of legacy sediments, he says, explaining sediments come from the agricultural period of the 18th through the early 20th centuries, when erosion from large-scale forest clearing and poor farming practices dumped millions of tons of soil into streams, valleys and floodplains (land adjacent to the waterways). Hundreds of mills and dams along Pennsylvania waterways caused water to slow down behind them and deposit additional tons of sediments, he says.
|
|
LandStudies restored 6,500 linear feet of the eroded floodplain at Shobers Run, and as many as 70,000 cubic yards of dirt from legacy soil areas were removed from the buried floodplain. The channel was pushed back to its historical location, and plants were added for aquatic habitat improvement. The project took about three months to complete at a cost of about $700,000. It ran concurrent with the golf course renovation.
Gutshall refers to the benefits of floodplain restoration as the E3 approach: economically enhanced ecosystems. The course is less likely to lose money because of a flooded course. Because of the restoration, debilitating floods are largely a thing of the past. Rainfall that would have shut down the course didn’t cause flooding post-renovation, Nagle says.
The renovated waterway also adds to the aesthetics of the course. New plants beautify the stream and are attracting new species of birds and other wildlife.
“We’re anticipating the trout habitat will become an opportunity for resort in the nongolf season where people will stay at the resort and fish the creek,” Gutshall says.
|
|
The resort was required to create three acres of wetland in exchange for building the hotel. The creek restoration resulted in eight new acres of wetlands. In addition, the legacy soil that was removed from the waterway was used to raise fairways, add mounds and raise greens and tees.
Another benefit, to the designers’ delight, is that floodplain restoration projects are often flexible enough to work around aspects of the course that can’t be changed.
“One thing we appreciated with LandStudies is that they understand and recognize that the golf course, in many instances, comes first,” Nagle says.
On holes 18 and seven, it was imperative the stream stayed where it was to keep the original course design intact, Nagle says, adding that LandStudies was careful to make sure that happened.
“If there are variables or constraints, we look at the constraints at beginning and typically have the opportunity to work around those constraints in a restoration process,” Gutshall says.
The idea of renovating the Old Course while keeping its original design in mind is what Forse Design president Ron Forse calls a “retro rebuild” – a new design that blends preservation, restoration and replication of the original design. The rebuilt Bedford Springs course, originally designed by Spencer Oldham and built in 1895, will have a feel similar to when it reopened in 1923 with Donald Ross’ design.
“We’re blending design ideas and making it all work together in historical context of Bedford Springs Resort,” Forse says.
For more information on floodplain restoration and legacy sediments, visit www.landstudies.com. For information on Forse Design, visit www.forsedesign.net.
