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~The Making of The Quarry: The Giants Ridge Legend~
When the IRRRB – a State agency
in charge of economic development of the Iron Range Region in Minnesota
– announced their plans for a golf course in 1993, there were far more skeptics
than supporters. The plan for
a golf course at the State-owned Giants Ridge Ski Resort was questioned,
in part, because the State took over the resort from a struggling private
operator. Also, the State-supported
Iron World Museum had also struggled in its attempts to boost tourism in
the area as an economic redevelopment tool.
Why, they reasoned, would a golf course be any more successful?
Most people said the golf course couldn’t, shouldn’t or wouldn’t
be built.
I was an
early skeptic on my first trip to Giants Ridge, connecting on a “puddle
jumper” from Minneapolis to Hibbing, Minnesota. I had heard of its sister city, Chisholm, but only by virtue
of the movie, Field of Dreams.
From there, it was a one-hour drive through agricultural areas, abandoned
open pit mines, and small towns whose fortunes were clearly tied to the
slowly declining mine industry in Northern Minnesota.
I was happy my contract absolves me from any responsibility for drawing
play!
Those
thoughts occurred before I reached the site!
The site made a great first impression, but it slowly it dawned on
me that it would be very difficult to construct a golf course there.
I was the first of many who came away from the site the first time,
exclaiming, “I had never seen so much rock!”
In fact, during construction, the course area looked more like a
moonscape than anything else, prompting one local wag to say, “We never
landed a man on the moon; we simply brought the Lunar Rover Vehicle here
for filming at night!”
Frankly,
I had never built a golf course on such a difficult site – although other
architects have. I spent much
of the early months researching how courses in New England are built in
rocky conditions from both an architect’s and contractor’s perspective.
Even with this, there was trepidation throughout the project that
unknown difficulties would ensue.
Lastly,
I began to agree with those who said the course wouldn’t be built as the
course faced numerous environmental hurdles during the planning process.
As
it turns out, the Giants Ridge project had been targeted by the Minnesota
EPA as a test case to reverse some recent rulings restoring more power to
local communities. If you’re
an environmental activist or environmental state regulator, local control
is a scary thing. Generally,
these environmentalists believe there was not sufficient environmental knowledge
for locals to determine their own fate, despite the political popularity
and constitutional tradition of maintaining diverse rather than central
control. However, environmentalists believe in the “interconnectedness”
of all things and prefer a strong Federal, State or, if possible, Global
Government to insure their goals (John Lennon should be singing “Imagine”
in your mind at this point. . . .)
So,
the State of Minnesota essentially sued itself to stop the golf course (insert
your own lawyer jokes here) until a settlement was reached at the highest
levels. In the meantime, the
project was delayed more than a year and a half, costs escalated to nearly
a million dollars for environmental mitigation, and the project became something
of a “cause celebrẻ” as perhaps one of the top ten “most challenging”
projects to date. Skeptics
aside, the project was done; and by all accounts, it was done well
and has done well. The
natural beauty of the site – where occasionally one sees moose, fox, deer
and the occasional brown bear – combined with a traditional, player-friendly
design inspired by Design Consultant Lanny Wadkins, has been popular with
golfers. The Minnesota North
Woods provide a fine backdrop for any golf course, and many claim it as
the prettiest they’ve ever seen.
From
a business perspective, efficient management and friendly service from the
resort’s golf operator, Evergreen Alliance of Irving, Texas, keeps costs
in line, allowing this top-flight golf experience to be had at a reasonable
price. It’s proven to be an
unbeatable combination! When
golfers come off the course saying it’s twice better than other resort courses
in Minnesota, at a fraction of the price, you know you hit on a formula
for golfing success! The acclaim
has spread beyond the Minnesota border, as the course has been featured
on numerous calendars and in varying publications and was a Golf Digest
“Best New Upscale Course” in 1997.
Further, it is currently ranked third in the State according to the
Golf Digest rankings, the highest rating of any public course.
And
the environmental concerns? They’ve
largely gone away. Monitoring
of water resources—one of the issues raised by environmentalists—has shown
that there are no, zip, nada, zippo – any number of a hundred different
ways to say no – golf course-related pollutants in any of the nearby lakes,
so the wildlife, fishermen and other outdoor recreationalists have not been
affected adversely by the golf course.
A few environmentalists have even told me that the course is beautiful
– somehow they had the idea that we would clear all trees out rather than
preserve natural beauty to the greatest degree possible.
Where
do the golfers come from? From
all over, actually. A stunning
90 percent of last year’s 28,000 rounds came from over 100 miles away.
After four o’clock, the locals tend to enjoy the course at twilight
rates. I once played with a
young man and his date. He
was just off of work (wearing a Pepsi shirt so I assumed he was a truck
driver). He looked roughly
like Bob Seger—definitely not your traditional golfer. So the golf course is catering to the traditional resort golfer
as well as opening up the game to a whole new audience.
From
the IRRRB’s perspective, the golf course has been successful enough to pay
off its bond and has spurred tourism and economic development, some of it
right on site. A hotel opened
a new hotel behind the first tee, in January 2000.
Restaurants and other hotels have benefited as well.
The course turned away almost as many rounds as it played in its
first two years, and the presence of the hotel is already creating further
demand already. Additionally,
the course rarely hosts tournaments or large outings because of the potential
for lost revenue.
Late
in 1998, seeing that the second year of operation was as substantial as
the first—and not just a result of curiosity—the IRRRB and began exploring
the idea of a second golf course.
We were called back in to perform a site selection service; and once
the site was selected, we entered into the design process for a second and
unique golf course at Giants Ridge.
In next month’s installment we’ll look at the site selection process for golf courses in general—and take you through the process that led to the selection of the site for the second course at Giants Ridge—soon to be known as The Quarry at Giants Ridge.