Hoping to further improve the image of Elgin by building a new 18-hole golf course at the city’s sports complex and tying it into an upgraded Spartan Meadows Golf Course, the Elgin City Council has given preliminary approval to proceed with a 27-hole golf complex that would cost more than $10 million.
The council approved the conceptual plan for the project and directed members of the city staff to finalize cost estimates and determine how the first phase of work would be funded. Those recommendations are to come back to the council for final approval in April.
The land deal would give Elgin Community College the back nine holes at Spartan Meadows to establish a Randall Road presence and land to build an access road to the college. Spartan Meadows is scheduled to turn over the nine holes in 2003.
This creates a race to build nine holes on the sports complex so the city will not lose its only 18-hole municipal golf course. Phase One of the project will be a new nine-hole course and practice area on the sports complex parcel, which will be connected to the Spartan Meadows front nine on the other side of McLean Boulevard by a tunnel to be built under the road.
The concept of a tunnel worried council member Marie Yearman, who said, “I have played on courses with tunnels, and they are constantly flooded.”
The tunnel is a key component of the first phase because it will allow continuous play on the two sides of the course. Without it, the city would essentially have two separate nine-hole courses.
Plans for the 18-hole sports complex course were begun in 1997, when St. Louis-based Keith Foster Golf Design Inc. was retained to design the course.
When the entire complex is completed, there will be 20 holes on the Sports Complex site and seven holes across McLean at Spartan Meadows. Play will start at the sports complex for the first hole and continue on the seven holes at Spartan Meadows before coming back to the ninth hole at the complex and the remaining 18 holes. The project is expected to be complete in 2009.
Preliminary cost estimates do not include clubhouse design and construction, the tunnel and other course amenities. Phase One, which is expected to begin this fall, has a cost estimate of about $3.3 million and would open in spring 2003.
Phase Two will include the second nine holes at the sports complex. Construction is scheduled to begin in fall 2005, and the course would open two years later. Preliminary cost estimates for this phase are about $4.5 million.
Phase Three will be the renovation of Spartan Meadows’ course beginning in 2008 and opening in 2009, costing about $2.4 million.
Keith Foster told the council that a decision regarding whether to keep Spartan Meadows a separate facility could be made later. While this would reduce the cost to the city, Foster said Spartan Meadows would need significant work regardless of whether the city connects the courses, and would require operating separate clubhouses. In addition, Foster said this would create a disparity between the two courses with two totally different facilities.
