Course builder Heritage Hyperlinks has utilized the ending touches to a few separate tasks within the Northeast, the place one membership has undergone its annual spherical of upgrades, and two extra are poised for his or her respective Section IIs following main renovation tasks.
At Liberty Nationwide Golf Membership, Heritage Hyperlinks returned to the shores of New York Harbor to prep the structure for this yr’s Northern Belief, a FedEx Cup Playoff occasion held Aug. 19-23. Heritage Hyperlinks constructed the unique design in 2005. Beginning in March 2021, the Houston-based building agency accomplished upgrades to 9 of the 18 holes at Liberty Nationwide, together with extra tees, irrigation upgrades, bunker modifications and inexperienced changes.
Forty-five miles north, within the coronary heart of Westchester County, Heritage Hyperlinks assisted Rees Jones in reviving The Summit Membership at Armonk, a rebranded, 18-hole membership that had been mothballed since 2014. Thirty miles east of Armonk, Heritage oversaw Section I of architect Lester George’s formidable renovation of Aspetuck Valley Nation Membership in Weston, Connecticut.
“It’s fairly simple for course builder to get pigeon-holed regionally, however Heritage does work all over the place — together with the Northeast, the place the practicalities of renovation schedules frankly complement our work elsewhere across the nation,” says Jon O’Donnell, division President of Houston, Texas-based Heritage Hyperlinks, a division of Lexicon, Inc. “There’s no denying the efficiencies of getting so many tasks going in a single regional location at one time. Within the sharing of apparatus and human sources, we will convey prices down and bid these job that rather more competitively.”
Heritage Hyperlinks is hoping for a return engagement at Aspetuck Valley, within the close to future, after finishing the primary of a multi-phase renovation in July. The speedy scope of labor included the entire rebuilding of 4 1/2 golf holes at this 1967 Hal Purdy design, the topic of a number of renovation efforts by way of the years. Heritage Hyperlinks arrived in October of 2020, regraded the topic holes, then geared up them with new drainage, irrigation, bunkering and placing surfaces.
The members have been fortunately enjoying these holes since June, in keeping with Doug Wright, vp of strategic planning at Heritage Hyperlinks.
“Via the years, the membership had accomplished a number of renovation tasks with various outcomes,” Wright says. “Due to that, there was numerous strain on the complete crew to ensure this particular mission was finished effectively — and achieved the specified objectives. Fortunately, the reopening of those new holes has been very, very optimistic. The membership has already approved Lester George to begin work on the following group of holes. Clearly, the membership acquired it proper — the precise architect and clearly the precise builder. The golf course superintendent, Lucas Lownes, additionally did a incredible job rising within the new areas, getting them prepared for play in a brief time frame.”
“Our aim,” George explains, “is to rework the golf course right into a extra strategic design, with bolder bunker kinds and mowing patterns that aren’t so curvilinear. We’ve additionally acquired to make the turf state of affairs extra sustainable, and in Lucas Lownes, we’ve top-of-the-line superintendents I’ve labored with. This was my first time working with Heritage Hyperlinks, however they knocked it out of the park — whereas coping with some horrible climate this winter and spring. Their shapers had been incredible. Their end work: incredible.”
One other observer at Aspetuck Valley is the famend course photographer Evan Schiller, who lives off the membership’s thirteenth fairway. Schiller yearly will get up-close, intimate impressions of high golf equipment across the nation. Nevertheless, his long-term, pandemic-aided publicity to an in-progress renovation job was a primary. “It was a captivating factor to observe,” Schiller says. “although I didn’t see a lot at first as a result of they parked a large pile of sand proper in entrance of my home! My spouse and I dubbed it Mt. Lester. And that was a part of what struck me most: The huge quantity of supplies required for simply 4 or 5 holes — all of the sand, all of the sod, all of the piping and gear. Then to see all of it deployed and the holes develop in? An incredible course of. The course is wanting so a lot better already.”
Over in Westchester, the renovation train at The Summit Membership was decidedly much less conventional.
The Al Zikorus design opened for play in 1963 as Bel Aire Nation Membership. Eleven years later, the Mitsubishi Company bought the property and renamed it The Canyon Membership. In 2009, it was bought once more and renamed Brynwood Nation Membership. In 2014, the brand new homeowners closed the complete operation pending formulation of a redevelopment/rebranding technique. Section 1 of that technique was set in movement this previous winter. It concluded on July 26, 2021, when The Summit Membership at Armonk reopened for member play.
“The golf course had been maintained considerably since 2014,” says Jorge Huerta, the Heritage Hyperlinks mission supervisor at Summit, “but it surely’s an attention-grabbing course of — reviving a course that’s been out of play that lengthy, in one of many nation’s best non-public membership markets. Section 1 was primarily a sort of facelift. We accomplished some attention-grabbing rerouting on the again, and created some new again tees. We rebuilt three greens and undertook quite a lot of drainage work. However bunkering was the main a part of this renovation, from a building perspective. We created 90,000 sq. toes of bunkering. Most of that was rebuilding current bunkers, however we created some and moved others.”
In line with Rees Jones vp/senior designer Bryce Swanson, the most important structural adjustments got here on the again 9: “The entrance 9 has good size to it, however the again 9 was fairly brief,” Swanson stories. “So we took the par-4 14th and acquired a allow that allowed us to clear a creek and create a 530-yard par-5. We additionally eradicated the par-3 tenth, then took the par-5 seventeenth and created a danger/reward par-4 that performs properly alongside the shore of a pond. Then we went uphill to create drop par-3 to the unique seventeenth inexperienced.”
For a few years, the structure at Bel Air/Canyon/Brynwood had performed simply 6,300 yards. The Summit Membership at Armonk now measures totally 6,700 yards from the ideas.
One other noteworthy facet of the Summit Membership redevelopment is its housing part. Section II contains building of 72 luxurious condominiums in six buildings positioned on the highest level on the property, with 20-mile views to the south and west.
“The housing component at Summit acquired my consideration,” says O’Donnell, president of Heritage Hyperlinks. “Right here’s a personal membership that has been dormant for a number of years — and a housing component is clearly a part of the marketing strategy. That’s not one thing we’ve seen a lot of, not since 2006.
“Heritage Hyperlinks simply accomplished one other course renovation job, this one in South Carolina, the place we revived a golf course that had been dormant for a decade or extra. The proprietor there may be Toll Brothers. In any case this time, some 900 new housing models are deliberate… For a very long time, of us within the golf enterprise shied away from housing-related tasks: Everybody is aware of what occurred in 2008. My crystal ball’s within the store, however it could be that the pendulum is beginning to swing again.”
