Sunset Golf Course in Middletown, Pa. will now have a links-style front nine to go with its more traditional parkland-style back nine, after tree work by Londonderry Township, which owns the course, that will also reduce a potential danger for airplanes approaching and departing the nearby Harrisburg International Airport.
A tree removal project at Sunset Golf Course in Middletown, Pa., will reduce a potential danger for airplanes approaching and departing the nearby Harrisburg (Pa.) International Airport (HIA), the Central Penn Business Journal reported, while also creating a unique “half-links” layout for the golf course.
The project will transform Sunset GC’s first nine holes into a links-style course, the Business Journal reported, while also improving aviation safety as HIA embarks on a multi-year rehabilitation of many of its runways.
Timothy J. Edwards, HIA’s Executive Director, told the Business Journal that most of the trees located along Sunset GC’s first nine holes had grown tall enough to pose safety hazards for air traffic.
So now, after the work is completed this winter by J&L Logging of Lancaster, Pa., for Londenderry Township, which owns Sunset GC, golfers visiting the course later in the 2017 season will have the opportunity to play two different styles of courses across its 18 holes, the Business Journal reported.
With the trees on the front nine gone, native grasses and native plantings will now surround the fairways and greens, along with new fairway sand bunkers. Following the tree removal, the course will undergo restoration work including new grassy areas, shrubbery, and an improved irrigation system. Completion is set for early in the second quarter, the Business Journal reported, depending on the weather.
The back nine, meanwhile, will remain a traditional tree-lined course.
“We feel the concept of getting to play a traditional course along with a links-style on the same property is pretty special,” course Superintendent Sam Risteff told the Business Journal.
Other cost-effective measures gleaned from the win-win-win project, the Business Journal reported, will include revenue earned for the township from hardwood and pulpwood harvesting, as well as from the harvesting of infected white ash trees.
The airport, meanwhile, will save more than $100,000 from the arrangement, the Business Journal reported. Absent the arrangement, it would have had to pay a contractor to remove and dispose of the trees, according to Scott Miller, HIA’s Deputy Director for Business Development and Strategic Marketing.
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