After starting $500,000 in golf course improvements to prepare for the return of a Champions Tour event in 2016, the Hoover, Ala. club is now seeking approval for construction of new golf operations and training centers and a renovation of its clubhouse’s cart storage area.
Greystone Golf & Country Club in Hoover, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham, has begun work on an expansion and improvement plan that will cost about $4 million, reported Al.com, the website powered by three major newspapers in the state (The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala.)
As reported by C&RB in May (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2014/05/07/greystone-gcc-announces-4-5m-upgrades/), club officials have begun to implement the plan by shutting down Greystone’s 18-hole Founders course for three months to make about $500,000 in improvements prior to the return of the Regions Tradition golf tournament to the club in 2016, Calvin Bolling, Greystone’s General Manager, told Al.com.
At the meeting of the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday evening, July 14, Al.com reported, the club will ask for approval of the next phase of the plan: construction of a 9,000-to-9,500-sq. ft. golf operations center for golf carts and laundry service at the Founders clubhouse, construction of a 2,500-sq.-ft. golf training center at the club’s Legacy course, and renovation of the 15,000-sq. ft. bottom floor of the Founders clubhouse, which now houses the golf carts.
The renovated area, Bolling said, will include a 4,000-to-4,500-sq. ft. fitness center, a casual dining room that seats 60 to 70 people, a new food and drink bar, new ladies locker room, a child care center and a kitchen to support the casual dining room and booked events such as wedding receptions and after-rehearsal dinners.
The idea is to provide amenities desired by club members but also to spruce up the club prior to the return of the PGA senior tour event (now known as the Champions Tour) that was previously held at Greystone from 1992 to 2005 as the Bruno’s Memorial Classic, Al.com reported.
“We don’t want the tour coming back to see Greystone as it was in 2005,” Bolling told Al.com.
The Champions Tour agreed to pay for the golf course enhancements and is overseeing that work, he added. The course improvements include re-doing 11 of the greens and a couple of tee boxes, replacing sand in all 39 bunkers, upgrading or replacing drainage areas, rebuilding some walking bridges and addressing creek erosion on a few holes, according to Bolling and club literature.
The goal is to reopen the Founders course by October 1, Bolling said.
If the city of Hoover approves the new construction projects, the club hopes to begin work on those immediately, he added, with a goal of having the golf training facility open at the Legacy course by January and the golf operations center open at the Founders course by April.
That would allow renovations on the bottom floor of the Founders clubhouse to begin in April 2015 and be completed by April 2016, a month before the Regions Tradition tournament, Bolling told Al.com.
Goodwyn Mills & Cawood is the architect for the Golf Operations Center, and B Dot Architecture worked on plans for the golf instruction facility. Hoar Construction is serving as the construction manager, and KFP Inc. has been hired as the general contractor, Al.com reported.
Club members will be paying about $50 a month for the building additions and renovation, in addition to their regular dues of $519 a month, Bolling said. Greystone G&CC currently has about 750 members, he added.
The new golf instruction facility at the Legacy course will have three indoor hitting bays that will allow people to practice hitting into nets during inclement weather, Bolling told Al.com. The bays also will open up to the outdoor driving range, he said.
The training center will also be equipped with technology to assist instructors as they teach people new strokes and help them practice to get better at the game, he added.
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