Good Morning,
This past week the golf course and clubhouse were closed for our cart path overlay project. On Monday, we received 0.6 inches of rainfall, which caused work to be put on hold for the day. The golf course was saturated but most of the precipitation soaked into the soil.
On Tuesday afternoon, staff assisted Blacktop Services with prep work on the cart path surfaces. This involved running a box blade over the existing cart paths and clearing vegetation to approximately an 8.5-foot width. We hauled the debris off-site, and then brushed the cart paths with a large broom. This work continued for the remainder of the week, ending Friday evening with all cart path surfaces ready for asphalt.
Late Wednesday morning, the cart path overlay project progressed to the asphalt stage. It was a learning process for most of the day. The existing cart paths were in much worse shape than we expected. Driving any type of equipment over these cart paths caused significant damage by lifting the old surface. Some existing cart path surfaces only had 1.5 inches of material and we were anticipating three inches throughout the course. This significantly slowed our progress.
Turning around corners with the paving machine was definitely challenging for the work crew because the back end tended to lift and float. We added crushed asphalt millings around the path from #5 green to #6 tees because the edge was approximately five inches and not safe for carts to drive on and off the surface.
On the first day we completed the cart path overlay on the path from the five green to the start of the fairway on hole six by mid afternoon. The next area was completed from #10 green to the tee boxes on hole eleven. We used approximately 178 tons of asphalt on the first day.
Thursday morning was more successful than the first day. We were able to start right away in the morning and move along at a pretty good pace. We finished the cart paths from #7 green to nine fairway, #1 green to two fairway, #17 green to #18 fairway, #1 tees, #9 green, and finished paving from ten tees almost reaching the area behind #1 tees. We used approximately 334 tons of asphalt on Thursday.
Friday morning, we tied completed the cart path from #18 green and tied it in at the south entrance to the clubhouse. Next, we moved from where we left off Thursday and tied that into the south side of the clubhouse stopping at the parking lot. The crew moved over to the golf course sign and laid a new path to the maintenance facility. Lastly we tied that path in with new asphalt around the cart sheds north of the clubhouse. We used approximately 287 tons of asphalt on Friday.
The golf course received 0.25 inches of rain Friday night. I took a golf cart around all of the completed cart paths to date. There are only some small puddles and overall everything looks amazing.
Our staff spent the last part of the week running rollers over all traffic areas from the project. The majority of the tire ruts have been rolled out and look very nice. We will run the rollers over the main haul roads again on Monday hoping this rainfall will help alleviate some of that compaction. We will also aerify the haul roads multiple times prior to the end of the season. Currently these areas are safe for golf carts. Hopefully when the frost is out in the Spring they will continue to improve.
The golf course has remained closed this weekend and will remain closed until this project is finished. We still have a lot of finish work to do around the completed cart paths, and the prep work on paths yet to be done is not safe for cart traffic at this time.
Overall, the project has been progressing very nicely. Due to the condition of the existing cart paths, we will use more asphalt than projected. We have no other option and our priority is to create a high quality product. We have currently used approximately 50 dump truck loads of asphalt totaling close to 800 tons.
This cart path project is funded by Hotel/Motel taxes and has no impact on property taxes for Spencer citizens. The golf course also operates as an enterprise fund, meaning it is self sufficient and uses no tax dollars from our citizens.
This is a huge project for our golf course and we want to ensure it is completed properly so the cart paths can be enjoyed for the long term. We also ask that only golf carts and turf maintenance equipment drive on the cart paths.
I thank everyone for their patience and understanding regarding the golf course closure for this project. Please reach out with any questions. Enjoy the remainder of the weekend!
Brian C Mohr
Director of Golf Operations
City of Spencer
101 W 5th Street
Spencer Municipal Golf Course
Spencer, Iowa 51301