Golf course $3.1 million overhaul pushed back to next year

HARLINGEN — The area’s golfers will have to wait at least about a year before city officials launch the long-awaited $3.1 million project aimed at transforming the Tony Butler Golf Course’s 18-hole course.

After five years of planning, officials were set to start construction around May 1 but soaring costs stemming from the supply chain crisis stopped the project from taking off.

Last month, city commissioners rejected requested construction bids after Baytown-based contractor Greenscapes Six presented a lone offer of $6.3 million — more than double the project’s $3.1 million budget.

Now, officials are pushing back the project to April 1, Jeff Hart, the golf course’s general manager, said Monday.

Meanwhile, Houston-based golf course architect Jeffrey D. Blume, whom commissioners hired for $217,000 to design the project, is trying to cut costs without paring down his vision.

“He thought there might be some potential savings,” Assistant City Manager Craig Hill said, referring to Blume. “Perhaps we can reduce some quantities or construction materials or techniques in an effort to reduce the price. Can we produce the same results with less number of (sprinkler) heads and less feet of pipe? Can we get the same sort of irrigation with less quantities (of sprinkler heads)?”

Cutting costs

So far, Blume’s planning to cut the project’s number of sprinkler heads from 1,2oo to 850, Hart said, adding each costs about $2,500.

“They built into the plans to irrigate wall-to-wall but we’re going to water the tees, greens, fairways and irrigation roughs and eliminate the stuff in the deeper areas,” he said. “It’s not going to decrease the quality of the course.”

Meanwhile, Blume’s also planning to substitute paspalum, a dense, adaptable turfgrass, for burmuda hybrid ultra-dwarf G-12 Champion grass on the course’s greens, Hart said.

Hart said he expects Blume will make more changes.

The project

As part of the original project, officials planned a $1.9 million overhaul of the golf course’s old irrigation system, a $575,575 upgrade of its greens and the development of a $264,000 drainage system along low-lying areas.

The project’s aimed at overhauling the 18-hole golf course’s greens and fairways, installing new grasses to replace the old bermuda surface.

The golf course’s greens are in for a big makeover, expanding from 3,000 to 6,000 square-feet.

Meanwhile, Blume’s design also calls for the reconstruction of the course’s tee boxes, where the hybrid Celebration will replace bermuda.

Along the fairways and roughs, the new design also calls for the hybrid Latitude 36 to replace bermuda.

Across the course, the project will also revamp the bunkers.

Background

Last year, commissioners dipped into the Harlingen Community Improvement Board’s budget, funded through a one-eighth sales tax earmarked to finance so-called quality of life projects, to fund the golf course’s $3.1 million overhaul, counting on drawing more players to help pull the course out of the red.