In July 2007 The Golf Club at Gray’s Crossing opened in Truckee, California amid the beauty and environmental sensitivity of the North Lake Tahoe area. For Weitz Golf International, who built the course over three construction seasons, the area provided challenges the company doesn’t normally face when constructing a golf course.

Butch Soto, Senior Project Manager for Weitz, says that the challenges ranged from limited access for construction equipment to the installation of special drains meant to filter runoff before it entered the centuries old wetlands to providing winter protection around greens in an area that can get 10 feet of snow in a season.

“We complete many jobs in wintry areas, but this job had the added distinction of being in an environmentally sensitive area,” Butch says.

The 18-hole private championship course was designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy. It was designed to achieve the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and the Audubon International Sustainable Community certification. The Audubon program focuses on sustainability, specifically a healthy environment, quality of life for citizens and economic vitality.

According to Audubon International’s website, “The Sustainable Communities Program helps communities take steps to ensure that they are healthy and vibrant places in which to live, work and play, both today and tomorrow. The program is tailor-fit to each community to ensure that its specific needs, priorities, resources, and challenges are addressed.”

Weitz Golf began construction on the course in August 2005. Because the area, which is at 6,000 feet above sea level, has a mandated construction season of May 1 to October 15, the company’s work stretched over three seasons. “Even though those are the guidelines, Mother Nature doesn’t always cooperate, and it didn’t mean that we could necessarily start by May 1,” Butch says.

(Above Photo) Weitz Golf employees work on a tee box at The Golf Club at Gray's Crossing.
(Above Photo) Shaping the fairway with a John Deere 750C Dozer.
(Above Photo) A CAT D8 Dozer cuts the fairway for the driving range.

From August to October 15, 2005, Weitz was able to shape nine holes, install irrigation for five holes, and complete some green construction. But, Butch says that the majority of the work was done during the 2006 season, with just a small amount to complete in 2007. “Most all of the turf was laid on 18 holes in 2006 and we completed about half of the driving range,” Butch says. “In 2007, we had some additional grassing to do and had to complete the remainder of the driving range and build one more practice putting green prior to opening. We completed all of our work in June.”

The challenges on this $7.5 million project for Weitz Golf mostly surrounded the stringent guidelines to protect the environment. “Although we didn’t have the bridge contract, wherever the course crosses a wetlands, a bridge had to be constructed by York Bridge out of Tampa, Florida,” Butch says. The tricky part of this phase was that there could be no equipment in the wetlands, so York had to keep adding to the timber bridge deck from the existing section, using it as a work platform. Once the bridges were completed, Weitz Golf came behind and strung the irrigation pipe under the bridge through its frames.

“We did the irrigation ourselves, which was one of the bigger tasks,” Butch says. “For the sections under the bridges, we used HDPE pipe, which is now becoming more common.”

With the HDPE, the pieces of pipe are fusion-welded by heating up the ends so that they weld themselves together, as opposed to typical irrigation piping that is belled at one end so that the pieces can be fit together. Butch says the HDPE pipe was used under the bridges because it lasts much longer than traditional pipe, thus averting what could be a major maintenance headache for the piping running over the wetlands.

The wetlands also dictated where construction equipment could be placed. “When we were in the dirt moving phase, we couldn’t necessarily just drive from one area to the next area,” Butch explains. “The next area may have been 60 feet away, but if there was a wetlands between the two areas, we may have had to go a ? mile around the wetlands to get to the new area.”

Plans for the course called for all the topsoil to be created from the soil on-site. The mass excavating contractor piled 140,000 cubic yards of dirt in the area that would become the driving range. Weitz crews then had to screen the dirt to get the fine dirt that they use on the golf course. According to Butch, Weitz is used to screening out rocks and debris, but in this case because the course is built in a heavily forested area, the debris included limbs, root balls and tree trunks. Once the dirt was screened, the Weitz crews distributed six inches of topsoil throughout the course where turf was to be laid.

The company had to install two special types of drains throughout the course: Audubon sumps and extra deep French drains. The Audubon sumps are sub-surface drains that transport the watershed through gravel, through another pipe and eventually out to the wetlands, free of contaminants. The extra deep French drains take care of the problem caused by unusually high amounts of moisture in the soil during the spring thaw. Because there is so much water, it travels laterally through the soil. The six foot deep trenches containing ? inch rock were installed at the base of slopes to accommodate the high volume of water. Draining this water will protect the structure of the greens, tees and bunkers.

In another bid to keep contaminants out of the wetlands, Weitz Golf was required to build snow fences around all the greens prior to winter shutdown each year. The course owners, EastWest Partners, then covered the greens so that when the snows melted, contaminates from the water run-off could not enter into the greens laboratory USGA approved materials.

The Weitz Golf crews varied in size depending on the work being done, but Butch says that at their largest, they had 35 to 40 people on the job. Weitz contracted with West Coast Turf to lay the sod for the course, and Advanced Asphalt installed the cart paths. The Golf Club’s superintendent, Joel Blaker, supervised the grow-in of the turfs and greens.

Weitz Golf is known for its ability to offer true turnkey projects for its clients, completing both the golf courses and the clubhouses and other structures for any project. For more than 150 years The Weitz Company has been in business there has never been a project they haven’t completed.

For more information look online at www.weitzgolf.com, or call (951) 676-7347. Cc