13
and saw the property I said ‘You
gotta be kidding me!’”
“The oil business is fueling the
housing business around there,”
Minchew explains. “You drive up from
the Denver airport and feel as though
you’re in the middle of nowhere, then
you come off the highway and there’s
a lot going on. The site is 1,100 acres.
The real estate part will be parceled
off and sold to large housebuilders.
Martin owns 60 percent and has a
development partner who owns the
rest. The golf course component is
325 acres, and recently I have been
spending a lot of time thinking about
how we keep real estate developments
from spoiling courses. So when Martin
called this January and said ‘We’re
ready to sign the contract and get
going’, I told him I wondered if we
had stuck too much to the original
land plan with my routing. I wanted
to do a ‘what-if’ exercise and see what
would happen if I put the clubhouse
where I thought it should be. And that
worked perfectly—now the clubhouse
has a view of all the arroyos and the
big lake, and we have 250 feet from
tees to the property line, so we have
really wide corridors where real estate
is going to be adjacent. I said ‘Martin,
we want to buffer the real estate from
the golf’. He said ‘I don’t believe in
real estate with golf course views.
They’re living in a community. Screen
it.’ We’re going to do some planting,
lower the golf course, make some big
berms. The theme of the golf course is
going to be the prairie grasses, so we
will transplant that material and build
topography on the holes that are in the
flatter areas. Those are also the areas
where we need to screen the homes.
“We’ll start construction in May
of next year and probably have half
a dozen holes seeded by the end of
the year. Continue irrigation during
the winter, finish seeding in 2016,
and maybe have a soft opening
towards the end of that year with a
full opening in 2017. Martin is going
to build it in house—we’re going to
get the best shapers I’ve ever worked
with—and take our time. We have
total flexibility to get it in there the
way we want. The practice area is on
a hillside, with 100 feet of elevation
change. There’s no rock there; we can
move dirt easily and cheaply. So in the
winter, Martin is going to turn it into
a ski slope. There aren’t many bunny
slopes with 100 feet of elevation. At
the top, there’ll be ice skating.”
The Country Club at
The Golden Nugget
Another business model that
continues to thrive is gambling, and
casino developments are at the heart
of two new courses currently under
construction in different parts of
the U.S. In Lake Charles, Louisiana,
architect Todd Eckenrode, ASGCA,
is close to completing a course for
the massive new Golden Nugget
casino development. Parent company
Landry’s, owned by billionaire
entrepreneur Tilman Fertitta, bought
the Lake Charles project, already
under construction, from Pinnacle
Entertainment in 2013, and it will
open late this year, with over 700
rooms and suites.
The Country Club at The Golden Nugget
Location: Lake Charles, Louisiana
Architect: Todd Eckenrode, ASGCA
