By Design - Fall 2019

20 | By Design CASE STUDY: BAYLANDS GOLF LINKS Meeting grow-in challenges The reinvention of Palo Alto Golf Course was featured in the 2018 ASGCA Design Excellence Recognition Awards. Jeff Langner of Profile Products provides an insight into their organizations’ role in the project. B uilt in the 1950s, the Palo Alto Golf Course was a relatively flat open-space course that, by the early 2000s, had seen better days. Located within the Baylands Natural Preserve in Northern California and along the San Francisco Bay, the course had fallen victim to salty soils, which hampered efforts to grow quality turf. There were other problems, too. Due to Silicon Valley and Palo Alto’s population growth and real estate development through the years, the nearby San Francisquito Creek, which at one time flowed naturally into the San Francisco Bay, became a drainage canal prone to flooding during rainy winters. This ecosystem shift resulted in unplayable course conditions and course closures. By 2010, the federal government, state officials, Palo Alto and adjoining Silicon Valley communities combined to create a joint venture authority called the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Committee to develop an action plan for the site. The considerations early on were to use portions of the golf course to widen the creek, change its radius and improve the levees. But in addition to solving the flooding problem, it soon became apparent that the course, with its non-native plants and large turf footprint, was a disruption to natural landscapes and wildlife of the Baylands Preserve. Those elements would need to change, too. “We knew that we wanted to make the golf course harmonious with the Baylands because that only made sense,” said course architect Forrest Richardson, ASGCA, of Forrest Richardson & Assoc. Richardson’s team eventually settled on a full course redesign and renovation, ultimately renaming the course Baylands Golf Links. The new plan would solve the flooding problem, improve course play and imbed the course beautifully into its natural environments. The $12 million renovation proposal would require trucking in about 400,000 cubic yards of soil from nearby Stanford University to create more dune-like features. The original course was largely flat and the new design would incorporate undulations and elevations ranging from five to 30 feet above sea level, enhancing topography and adding appealing vistas not seen in the past. The new course would feature USGA greens and tees, reconstructed bunkers and a complete system of concrete cart paths. More importantly, the new course would also reduce maintained turf from 143 to only 87 acres. Of the 56 turf acres removed, 11 would be set aside for public recreation while the remaining 45 acres would be a nearly even split between wetland and lowland areas along the bay with salt tolerant plants and hillocks, or large swaths made up predominantly of native grasses. Those 45 acres were critical to restoring indigenous turf and wildlife to the course, replacing previous invasive species in place in the past. The new course would encourage long-term sustainability of the property’s ecosystem. However, growing-in seeds for native plants and grasses in that 45-acre region would prove challenging. And Soil amendments | Jeff Langner