THIRTY SIX HOLES FROM ONE BIG ONE!
Regeneration of brownfield industrial sites for sporting use has taken on a new dimension, as Tom James unearths
T
he year 2010 will be a watershed for golf. Not only is Celtic Manor Resort hosting the Ryder Cup, a landmark event for Wales, but also two brand new
championship courses open in Scotland, built from one of Europe’s largest brownfield reclamation sites.
The Ryder Cup is a theme common to both though, for the new courses, now under construction as part of the huge Heartlands project arising out of the former Polkemmet Colliery in Whitburn, West Lothian, central Scotland, honour the memory of renowned golf course designer Donald Ross, who fashioned Oakland Hills Country Club, Michigan, scene of the 2004 tournament. The developers, Ecosse Regeneration, who started works in 2004, are progressing an ambitious multi-million pound project that will provide a range of amenities, with sport at its heart, but that will also embrace a state of the art clubhouse, full practice facilities including a bespoke floodlit driving range planned to be part of a golf academy, a mixed development of leisure and retail, luxury hotel complex and apartments along with 2,000 new homes. The main focus though is, arguably,
the creation of the West and East championship 18-hole golf courses, created out of an old coalmine that had lain derelict since its closure in 1986 and one of the most contaminated sites in Scotland.
The scope of the development is vast - some 30 million cubic metres of overburden, including some 4.5 million cubic metres of colliery waste, were moved within the 470-hectare sites with some of the inert colliery spoil being re- engineered as topsoil for the two courses, mixed with specially developed compost to create a cost-effective growth medium. Working closely with the US-based Donald Ross Society, Ecosse Regeneration are seeking to emulate the work of this most revered of golf architects as a fitting tribute to a man who applied his art to some the world’s great courses. After compiling a dossier of information and guidance on various aspects of course design, Ecosse, along
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with the PGA of Great Britain & Ireland’s associate company, PGA Design Consulting (PGADC), are emulating Ross’s designs and interpreting them for today's needs.
The designers were keen to produce a
proposal that would not only be a tribute to Donald Ross’s unique style but also one that would make the most of the landscape. Importantly, the courses are planned to cater for golfers of all standards whether amateur or top level professional. “The philosophy is one of golf for all,”
proclaims Alex Muirhead, Ecosse Regeneration’s project manager. “We aim to create a golfing environment that will keep players coming back time after time.”
The culture of the Heartlands golf
project is perhaps best summed up in Ross’s own words: “To make each hole present a different problem and to arrange it that every stroke must be made with the full concentration and attention necessary to good golf, to build each hole in such a manner that it wastes none of the ground at my disposal and takes advantage of every possibility that I can see.” Work on the first course, the West, is
already moving on. The first six holes are due to be officially unveiled early next year under the first phase of the multi-million pound development but some are in fact playable now - two holes having been completed last autumn, with seeding of a further four holes due this autumn.
As part of the wider project, there is an aim to not only provide a state of the art leisure facility and quality housing but also allow jobs to be created. Part of this initiative is the planned business park which will be in union with a new junction on the M8, and which will represent the first fully privately funded full motorway junction ever built in Scotland.
The Ecosse programme is innovative in many ways, not least because the developers have wanted to regenerate the land by avoiding any importation of huge volumes of topsoil, which would have had a big bearing on costs. “We wanted to regenerate the site in a
IT’S
cost effective and sustainable way, so we initially trialled quality compost mixed with colliery shale to manufacture topsoil on a small section of the site,” comments Muirhead.
“Quality compost offers an excellent balance of water and nutrient retention properties when mixed with screened colliery shale,” he explains. “Its advantages include lower transport costs, use of recycled material and compost, which cut the costs of buying in topsoil.” “Also, compost is free of weed seeds and pathogens, so should require less maintenance,” Muirhead goes on. “Soil that is manufactured on site will have more consistent chemical and physical characteristics than topsoil brought in from other sources.” The trials brought good news indeed for Muirhead, who is keen to stress their success. “They produced cost benefits, particularly when comparing the cost of manufacturing the blended compost and
POLKOMMET
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