The “Outstanding Facility & Parks Award” recognizes public agencies for exceptional and unique achievements in design and development. Competing in the Renovation Category in Award Division IV (agencies with an equalized assessed valuation of $1 billion or more), the District’s nomination scored the highest total number of points among those entries submitted statewide.

Not an Overnight Success
An accomplishment like this doesn’t happen overnight. Involving extensive improvement projects, such as shoreline stabilization, installation of its new irrigation system, and bunker reconstruction, to name a few, the District’s award-winning renovation program actually began seven years ago, marking the first time in more than twenty years that any major golf course remodeling programs had been undertaken at the course.

“In today’s market, we’re competing against 18-hole facilities, and we’re competing against championship courses, yet we’re a 9-hole facility,” said Denise Gillett-Parchert, Pottawatomie Golf Course Superintendent. “These changes brought the standards up, and yet it’s still the same, friendly, local, hometown course that everybody can call their own.”

“Everybody” encompasses some 37,000 players who visit the course each year. With that amount of traffic, the District’s goal was to make improvements that would accommodate players of all ages and abilities on safe and well-maintained grounds while remaining sensitive to the heritage of the facility and faithful to the design of its original architect, Robert Trent Jones, Sr.

Jim Spear, a landscape architect from St. Charles, designed the shoreline stabilization plan. The irrigation system was designed by Emmerich and Associates, and Greg Martin of Martin Design Partnership was responsible for renovation of the greens, tees and bunkers. Project engineer was Christopher B. Burke Engineering of St. Charles.

“As related to renovation of the bunkers and tees, Greg Martin’s philosophy fit our golf course,” said Gillett-Parchert. “It was very important to him to keep the integrity of the Robert Trent Jones design, yet improve playability and enjoyment for all golfers.”

One of the preeminent golf course architects of the twentieth century, Jones designed or redesigned more than 500 golf courses throughout America and around the world. Noted for their artistic blending of naturalistic landscaping with bold placement of bunkers and water hazards, Jones’s courses revolutionized the concept of stimulating play where strategy counted as much as technique. In designing the golf course, Jones capitalized on the course’s Fox River bank location when laying out his nine-hole design.

“It’s nice to be able to carry on something to the best of your ability that Robert Trent Jones, Sr. originally started,” said Jim Wheeler, Pottawatomie Golf Course Manager and PGA Golf Pro. Opened in 1939, Jones’s design has endured for nearly 70 years, and while the District’s goal for a golf course with this prestigious legacy was to remain true to Jones’s original vision as much as possible, “the terrain, the number of people who are playing, the safety factors — all enter into whether you are able to maintain the design,” said Wheeler.

Building Better Bunkers
Bunkers — those pits of sand found near the playing greens — are strategically positioned to provide challenges for golfers. And while it’s one thing to hit a golf ball out of a few inches of sand, it’s quite another to do so while standing in a puddle of water or to unexpectedly lob out a small stone instead.

“The bunkers weren’t playable,” according to Gillett-Parchert. “Players couldn’t get a decent bunker shot out of them. But now you can. It makes a big difference.”

In fact, it was just this kind of feedback from players that confirmed what Gillett-Parchert and Wheeler already knew: that the bunkers did not live up to the standard of play the golf course wanted to provide. To accomplish this part of the mission, bunkers had to be dug out, underlying drainage tiles, liners and pea gravel replaced, and new sand brought in to ensure a consistent quantity and quality. In some areas, such as the first hole, an entire bunker was removed because it rested on a foundation of rock that was forcing stones up into the sand area. And because some of the renovations were located within a flood plain, regulations prohibited adding new materials. The District was able to comply with Kane County guidelines by reusing materials for tee construction on five of the course’s nine holes.

A Natural Conclusion
In addition to the bunker and tee renovations, extensive landscape restoration involving native vegetation took place on the approaches to several holes, as well as on buffers around the existing lagoon. Aiding in the filtration of fertilizers and pesticides through a fibrous root system that helps purify the run-off before it enters the Fox River, native plants also provide essential habitat for the various birds and animals found at the golf course, thus enabling the District to maintain its distinguished “Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary” status.

Healthy turf not only contributes to the overall level of course playability, but also it is an important aesthetic component. The challenge was finding a way to consistently make the course lush and green without stressing fragile natural resources. Water conservation, in the form of an upgraded and redesigned underground sprinkler system, was therefore part of the District’s environmental game plan when renovating the course. Replacing the old single-row system with a double row system and installing a new variable frequency drive system provided better direction and control. “It made a huge difference in that the course became almost wall-to-wall green,” said Wheeler. A new pump also allowed for more efficient use of resources, in that water was no longer drawn from the Fox River, but instead removed directly from the District’s well.

Indeed, accessing the Fox River itself was beginning to be more problematic over the years, especially as its shoreline continued to erode. Since the river played such an essential role in Robert Trent Jones’s original golf course design, controlling riverbank deterioration was of paramount concern. Collaborating with the Kane-DuPage Soil and Water Conservation District and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the District undertook a shoreline stabilization project designed by local architect Jim Spear by installing gabion baskets -- interconnecting wire baskets filled with rocks -- that functioned as retention walls. The baskets were then covered with horticultural cloth imbedded with native plant material that not only helped secure precious soil, but provided yet another wildlife habitat.

Through it all, the course remained open for play, which dictated a certain amount of inconvenience for players. “We didn’t have the ability to shut down, do everything, and then reopen,” said Gillett-Parchert, who credits her staff — assistant Jose Garcia, Dan Baltierra, Rich Balla, Sr., and David Maas — with the project’s success.

Sometimes, the course needed to be divided into specific sections in order to allow continued play. Such disturbances were taken in stride, according to Wheeler. “Players were okay with it when they knew it was something they had asked for and they knew there was logical reasoning behind the things we were doing.” The District took special pains to keep golfers abreast of the renovations.

The feedback now? “It’s great, it’s wonderful,” declares Wheeler.

Primrose Farm to Open in Summer 2008
Primrose Farm is a 190-acre historic farm, with 100 tillable acres. The farm, located at 5N726 Crane Road in St. Charles Township, is part of Primrose Farm Park. The farmstead will be a model of an early 20th century working farm that will juxtapose 1930’s era farming technology with modern farming. Farm Manager Kirk Bunke said, “Primrose Farm will offer farm discovery trails leading into the fields where visitors can see farming techniques in practice. We’ll also have community garden plots and picnic shelters. It’s a great way to demonstrate the changes in farming technology as well as emphasize where our food comes from. Besides being educational, Primrose Farm is also a great place for anyone who is nostalgic about farming.”

Primrose Farm will be unveiled early summer 2008 and open for the public year round. It is the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of planning and active restoration. Look for grand opening information and program schedules at www.st-charlesparks.org later this year.

The St. Charles Park Foundation hosted a Farm Frolic fundraising event last October for the purpose of raising money to purchase livestock for Primrose Farm. As a result of the successful event, 50 Columbian Wyandotte chickens, four Yorkshire pigs, and seven Shropshire sheep will be purchased and housed at this historic site this spring.

Kiswaukee College Refurbishes Tractor for Primrose Farm Park
The Kishwaukee College Diesel Power Technology (DPT) department came to the rescue of a 1948 Farmall-A tractor that will be used at the District’s Primrose Farm, located at 5N726 Crane Road. The DPT students in Kishwaukee Education Consortium (KEC) class refurbished the vintage tractor, which will be used as part of the model farm to demonstrate farming methods from the early 20th century.

According to Farm Manager Kirk Bunke, the tractor was donated to the District by Gertrude Zenner of Morton Grove, whose late husband used it as part of his truck-farm operation. The cultivating tractor is a vintage Farmall and needed some work to restore it for use at Primrose Farm. Bunke said he knew community colleges often have automotive and diesel programs and began to search for a college to restore the tractor. His search led to instructor Butch Griswold and Kishwaukee College. Griswold thought it was a perfect project for the high school students enrolled in the program through KEC. Griswold said, “The students worked on the engine to get the tractor up and running, plus did some body work, cleaned it up and painted it.”