GIRARD — City staff has teed off on a series of renovation projects at the Crawford Hills Girard Municipal Golf Course that should give the course a whole new look.
Kurt Ziegler, Girard utility superintendent, and city worker Clifford Scales worked Tuesday to add sheet rock and continue progress on the new maintenance and office building at the golf course, one of several improvements planned for the course.
“We are about 70 percent through the maintenance building at the golf course,” said City Administrator Gary Emry. “From there, we will go on to the clubhouse.”
Emry said the clubhouse repairs should start in mid-August.
Both the clubhouse and the maintenance building are major parts of the project to renovate the golf course, a project made possible thanks to a utility settlement that Emry said would finance the estimated $275,000 cost. All of the project is part of the city’s effort to make quality-of-life improvements throughout the city.
Count Ron McBride, Girard Municipal Golf Course superintendent, among those looking forward to all of the changes. It was exactly one year ago that McBride started in his job to try and make the golf course the best it could be.
“I do kind of look at this as my anniversary gift,” McBride said, laughing. “But it has been a whole lot of work.”
Course work
Much of that work has already taken place on the golf course, McBride said. For one thing, he has filled the greens in so well that Councilman Dan Smith compared it to “walking on sponges.”
“That’s just the greatest compliment that you can give (McBride),” Smith said. “You see his face just light up.”
The course also lights up more now than it used to, courtesy of new fountains in ponds near the seventh and ninth greens, both of which light up at night. The seventh is the bigger of the two ... the five-horsepower motor boasts several different design settings for the water outburst, though McBride said he thought he had the right one figured out.
“There’s a wider one that looks pretty nice,” McBride said. “But honestly, it would wind up spraying up over the banks all of the time.”
Both fountains, and one of the ponds, were added within the past few weeks.
Then there are the two bunker additions. The smaller version sits near the second green, but a larger one threatens the eighth hole.
“The grass hasn’t quite filled in the way that I would like,” McBride said. “The shade makes it more difficult there. But I think it should be pretty nice.”
General landscaping around the course is also planned.
