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Under Fire

The project's engineer is the man on the spot when agency approvals are needed

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By John Garrity

"I think everybody's squirming a little bit today," says Bobby Weed. It's early February and ground breaking is still 10 weeks away, but the architect and the other members of the University of Florida Golf Course redesign team are starting to panic over a few pieces of paper. "Right now the entire project rests in the hands of the engineer," says Weed, pulling up to the clubhouse in a golf cart after a morning of sketching and note-taking on the course. "Right now Jay Brown is the guy with the bull's-eye on his forehead."

Florida hired Brown to deal with all the regulatory hassles. Bill Frakes

An hour later, in the All-American Room, I look across the conference table at Jay Brown. I don't see the bull's-eye, but I note a pen in his shirt pocket -- the badge of the civil engineer. Brown, 37, is a principal of Brown & Cullen Inc., the Gainesville firm the University Athletic Association hired to obtain all the necessary permits from regulatory agencies. One of these agencies, the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD), is weighing whether it will grant a no-fuss general permit for a storm-water management system and an irrigation pumping station that Weed wants to build adjacent to the pond by the 8th green. A general permit is issued by the SJRWMD staff in Palatka when a project doesn't require extensive oversight. That happens quickly. However, if the water use is more ambitious, the staff can require an individual permit, which involves weeks of review and a vote by the SJRWMD board at its monthly meeting. That's a time-consuming process, and the mere threat of delay produces beads of sweat on the forehead of assistant athletic director Chip Howard, who has promised Florida AD Jeremy Foley and athletic boosters that the course will reopen on homecoming in November with a party and a tournament.

ROOTING FOR TREES Many trees will fall in the demolition phase of the Florida course renovation, but the best will be saved, and about 70 have been targeted for transplantation. "This is a good time to prune their roots because the sap is not flowing," says course superintendent Mark Birdsell, examining a 25-foot live oak between the 4th and 5th fairways. "Your tree nurseries are out right now root-pruning their trees for sale next year." This particular tree, whose trunk is about 12 inches in diameter, is as symmetrical as a Rorschach inkblot, unlike the moss-draped heritage oaks that lean dramatically over various holes. That's because this tree came from a commercial nursery. "This is about a $3,000 tree if we purchased it today, and with installation it would cost about $4,400," Birdsell says. "But we can hire a man and a tree spade [to root-prune] for $1,000 a day." The root-pruning itself is crude surgery. The tree-spade operator backs up his truck to the tree and encircles the trunk with the spade, a powerful machine with four knife blades angled to meet below the ground. When the operator throws the switch, the blades slice down through the surface roots and join under the tree to create a compact root ball. It only takes a few minutes, and the tree has weeks or months to develop new feeder roots before transplantation. "We'll do some canopy work, too, trim some branches," Birdsell says. "That's necessary to keep the tree healthy when you've cut away the roots." There are significant savings to be gained by transplanting, which is why Weed's budget proposal calls for 15 days of tree-spade work at $1,200 a day for a two-man crew. "If we can move four eight-inch trees a day," says Scot Sherman of Weed Golf Course Design, "you're talking only $300 a tree." In addition, Weed plans to transplant 15 larger trees, in the 20- to 24-inch range, and spend between $75,000 and $100,000 for 100 new oaks and pines from a local nursery. "There could be more," says Sherman. "If we save money on contracts, we'll put it right back in landscaping."

"It's a threshold issue," Brown tells me the following afternoon at his offices on Northwest 43rd Street. "A bigger project needs to be looked at more closely, and the district says the threshold is 100 acres." The golf course, alas, covers 117 acres, and if you count the entire Florida campus, which the water district can do, you're looking at 2,000 acres and an infinitely more complex regulatory process. "Our argument is that the majority of the course isn't affected by the work, so a general permit should be sufficient." To help him make this argument, Brown has hired Marsha Parker Tsoflat, an attorney who specializes in water management issues and environmental permitting -- and who, not coincidentally, used to work for SJRWMD.

"If it weren't for the time constraints, I wouldn't be hiring a lawyer," Brown says, standing in the well of his big wraparound desk. "In fact I hate to do it. The water management district is understaffed and overburdened, and I don't want to make its work harder." He shrugs and taps his fingers on a thick binder of campus water-use regulations. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease," says Brown. "Whoever is bugging the district the most gets the attention."

Brown has another problem, one to which he thinks the university hasn't given enough attention. The Athletic Association wants to move the maintenance building from the northwest portion of the course to a site south of the 7th fairway. On a topographical map the new site is at elevation 62. This is significant because a series of rainstorms in 1998 sent floodwaters surging to level 60, inundating the 7th fairway. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection does not allow storage of hazardous materials in a floodplain. The maintenance facility will store fuel and agricultural chemicals.

"I think I can get the floor of the facility up to 64 or 65," Brown says, explaining how dirt dug up from the golf course can be used as fill to raise the ground under the new barn. But even that won't solve the problem because a new drainage study done by the university raises the floodplain boundary to 71.5 -- more than 10 feet higher than the flood level of '98. To raise the storage floor that high, Brown would have to put the maintenance facility on budget-busting concrete stilts or build a ramp up a man-made mountain. (Weed, a veteran of permitting battles, smiled wearily at the news. "We're digging holes nine feet deep and not hitting water," he said, "and we have to build a tree house for a maintenance facility?")

Brown will fight for the southern site, but he isn't optimistic. "There are too many obstacles," he says. He recommends instead that the new building be built near its current location in the northwest corner of the property, at the intersection of 34th Street and 2nd Avenue. This will require that Weed move the 15th green, build the new 5th tee farther south than planned, and plant a landscape screen between the maintenance building and the course. "We can put in a double row of hollies," Weed conceded. "You'll be standing twenty feet away and not see that building."

In the meantime Brown and his staff are working into the wee hours to bring in the permits. "I'm going to have to make a huge effort to meet the deadline," he says. "By our weekly team meeting next Tuesday, these permit issues have to be resolved."

Brown sits in his chair and rocks, and in the bright fluorescent light from the overheads you can see the worry lines on his brow.

In the next installment of This Old Course, assistant athletic director Chip Howard splits hairs, not to mention cart paths, to keep the project on budget. We'll also eavesdrop on Weed and Sherman as they tour the property, and we'll find out if Brown clears all the regulatory hurdles in time for groundbreaking on April 23. (If Brown fails, look for a new series in this spot: Adventures of an Out-of-Work Civil Engineer.)

Issue date: April 2, 2001

 

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