Thursday, Oct. 5, 2000 | 11:05 a.m.
About 50 Henderson residents got a preview Wednesday night of the 18-hole municipal golf course that may soon fill the rocky expanse behind their homes in the Whitney Ranch area.
The course, designed by Texas-based Evergreen Alliance Golf Ltd., is intended to offer residents a more affordable alternative to the numerous private courses already in the city.
Those attending the informational meeting held in the recently christened Whitney Ranch Recreational Center were excited over the prospect of having the course due north of the intersection of Arroyo Grande and Sunset Road.
But some had questions regarding proposed fees, course design and water issues long related to the site's penchant to channel floodwaters into surrounding streets.
Forrest Richardson, the course's architect, said the city provided the company a hydrological study of the parcel and requested Evergreen respond to those needs in its course design. It did.
Whitney Ranch Mesa Golf Course -- if built -- will contain a series of detention works and a reservoir that would link to already existing city culverts and storm drains to help divert and hold seasonal floodwaters.
"(The course) will not only improve the site, but it will help control the water," Richardson said.
In addition, homes along the eastern side of the course will enjoy a buffer zone between the greens and their outer wall of about 60 to 100 feet, Todd Watson, vice president of business development for Evergreen, said.
Fees for Henderson residents are expected to range from $15 to $50, including golf cart, while prices for nonresidents could reach $120, he said.
R.P. Maurice said he was glad to see a golf course coming to his neighborhood, especially after fending off apartment buildings proposed for the site.
"We've been fighting (apartments) for years. I think everyone here is agreeable with a golf course," he said.
But he did raise one concern at the meeting: Would the course's water policies affect adjacent properties, which, like the course, rest on a shallow water table?
"We are going to be lowering that water," John Rinaldi, the city's property manager, said. "It will be a measurable, significant, but not dramatic, lowering of the water table."
Maurice expressed concern that lowering the water table could damage area homes. But, he said, only time would tell.
A final contract on the leasing arrangement is expected to be finalized next month, Rinaldi said.
Evergreen hopes to open the course in late 2001 or early 2002.
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