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Not Out of the Woods Yet With groundbreaking set to start, preserving a rare plant threatened to stop the project
Updated: Wednesday May 02, 2001 10:34 AM By John Garrity
"I really appreciate the effort the design team has made," says
associate professor of landscape architecture, Peggy Carr, looking across the
big conference table toward the golf course architects, the consulting
botanists, the civil engineer and the assistant athletic director. "It's
extraordinary." The smiles of the petitioners are starting to bloom when
Carr throws the unexpected punch. "I move," she says, "that we
reject any encroachment to the Northwest Quadrant plants." The room
is silent, as if the design team can't absorb the words. An eyebrow arches here
(puzzlement), a mouth gapes there (disbelief). "I second the motion,"
says professor Walter Judd, a botanist. Just like that, This Old Course is on
life
support.
It's Monday, April 23, the scheduled day for groundbreaking on the University of Florida Golf Course restoration project. Bulldozers are supposed to be roaring, trees are supposed to be falling. That, however, was before the design team learned that the wooded strip it planned to clear for its new 5th hole was home to several rare plants, including a colony of spotted wake-robin trillium. Now the designers are on their third trip to the university's Lakes, Vegetation and Landscaping Committee, a 12-member board that reviews campus development and makes recommendations to university vice president Ed Poppell. On its last visit the design team was told that it had to reduce the impact on the 6.6 acres of woods in the northwest corner of the site to get the committee's approval. The course architects, Weed Golf Course Design, went back to the drawing board and cooked up Design Option F, which moved the 5th hole 20 yards to the east and shortened the 15th hole, a par-3, from about 225 yards to 210. Besides the weakening of the 15th hole, the new plan eliminates the course nursery and one of the practice greens for the Gators' golf teams. But Option F saved 80% of the threatened plants. "Clients are always telling us, 'We want you to restore our original course,'" Bobby Weed had earlier told the committee during the designers' presentation. Right on cue a projector displayed a 1935 aerial photograph of the course, built on the site of a hog farm. In the picture, only a few stunted oaks populate an otherwise treeless layout. "To do that," Weed said, "we'd have to log the whole site." Speaking in defense of the trillium, retired botany professor Dan Ward pushed the time frame back a few years: to the Pleistocene Epoch, around 15,000 B.C. That's when the advance of glaciers in North America cooled the climate to the point that Trillium maculatum -- a three-leaf plant found in abundance in today's Appalachian Mountains -- could grow in north-central Florida. It was a marvel, Ward says, how these plants survived the subsequent shift to a warmer climate. "This is a unique ecosystem ... the equivalent of the sequoias. Back off! Keep this area sacrosanct." That's exactly what the committee is about to do when Weed asks for clarification. Has Professor Carr changed her position? Is she now saying that the standard is zero encroachment on the habitat, or is she asking for less encroachment? Carr hesitates. "Couldn't we just delay 365 days?" she asks. The design team reacts with gurgling noises and groans. Contracts have been signed. A pump station for irrigating the course is on order, as is the turfgrass. The workers are poised, and they have families to feed. "Where there's a will, there's a way," Professor Carr responds. But then she softens, accepting the goal of "saving more of the plants." That leaves the issue of timing. Can the committee hold a special meeting to consider a revised routing plan and make its recommendation before the university's Land Use committee gives final approval to the whole package in early May? Better yet -- this suggestion from Weed -- can the committee meet again this very day? "We're all here," he says. "We can have a new option ready by this afternoon." Weed is desperate; it's as if he's hitting driver from the fairway on the final hole with out-of-bounds on both sides and water guarding the green. The committee members, striving to be fair, consult their calendars and agree to meet again at four o'clock to consider a revised plan. "Bobby saved the day," whispers Jay Brown, the team's consulting engineer.
The design team hustles down the hallway to another room, where Weed's senior associate course designer, Scot Sherman, slaps a routing plan on the table and begins to sketch. "There is an option," he says. "You cut down this big oak tree...." His tone is sarcastic, but he's trying to figure out how to lengthen the par-3 6th hole in the woods to the south, which would make up for the shortening of number 15. Weed, bent over the plans, straightens up and says, "I need to go to the site." Ten minutes later we're dodging hanging vines and stepping over broken bottles in the disputed area behind the golf course maintenance building. The trillium plants, marked with little blue flags, are spectacularly unspectacular, indistinguishable to the untrained eye from the noxious weeds that choke the hammock. Bobby Weed, brainstorming furiously, is considering every option -- shortening number 15 even further, lengthening number 6, narrowing the drainage basin south of the new maintenance barn, lengthening the par-3 8th hole, flipping the nines so that the longer par-3 will come later in the round. "Ideally, you want the course to strengthen coming in," Wood explains. Sherman looks at his watch. It's 1:43. By 2:15 the designers have made their way across town to the engineering offices of Brown & Cullen, where Sherman joins Jay Brown in sketching out solutions to the impasse. On the new drawings Option F is shaded in orange and Option G in blue -- the university's colors. The new plan calls for the 5th tee to be 50 feet farther east, which preserves the buffer of trees that shades the trillium. The 15th green slides 65 feet to the east, which, with the change in the nearby drainage basin, reduces the impact on the woods by an additional acre. Brown checks his numbers with a calculator, ventures a tired smile and says, "Option F protected 80 percent of the habitat. With this plan, we save 94 percent." He sends off the drawing to be plotted and then sinks back in his chair with a sigh. It's 2:46. At 3:50 the design team is back at the athletic department, preparing its final presentation. Assistant athletic director Chip Howard says to Weed, "So, Bobby, are you all right with this?" Weed grunts his assent. At four o'clock the Lakes, Vegetation and Landscaping Committee reconvenes. The professors listen to a brief presentation and bend over the table to study the new plan. "This provides a much better buffer for the population," says Judd. Howard, hoping to close the deal, says, "We think this is a plan everybody can live with." After a few more minutes of amicable discussion Professor Carr says, "I move we approve the modified plan. It may not be ideal, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was in the morning." The motion is seconded, and at 4:22 p.m. every committee member raises a hand. The golf course renovation plan is approved. In the next installment of This Old Course, the bulldozers will roar, trees will fall, and -- yeah, yeah, that's what we said last time. But really, the demolition phase is about to begin. The last apparent hurdle is the university's Land Use and Facilities Planning committee, which meets on May 1. Be there or be square. Issue date: May 7, 2001
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