Saturday, April 21, 2007

This Week - Update

This week has been a very hectic, disorganized week. Much like most weeks, but for some reason it seemed more this week. For this reason, I never had the time to finish organizing my blogs. So, I figured I would share with you what I have been working on this week.

I was in China until late Tuesday night. This trip proved to be successful in the fact that we made lots of new contacts, worked on a bit of redesign, presented for a new project near Shanghai, and have been asked to prepare proposals for two new projects, one in southern China, and one near Beijing.

The trip was good, but it put me behind on several projects. This month I am in Slovakia setting up a new project that demands attention. We are currently in the initial Permit Phase and finalizing reports and designs. We have moved on to consult on the housing and the clubhouse designs with the client and will soon be putting the entire package together for the overall Master Plan.

We are also making revisions to permit plans on a project located 10 miles from the Slovak capitol, Bratislava. This will be the closest championship level golf resort to the capitol. We have had issues with housing areas, but have now established the final site locatations and will be finishing infrastructure and roadway documents within the next 6-8 weeks.

Next week will be a crazy one as we try to wrap up several tasks and get ready to head back to the states for a little while. I will be meeting with building architects, three clients, and several local engineers to finalize drawings and reports. It is always fun working on these projects overseas because of the language, newness of such projects, and the education process that it takes to get a project going.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Upcoming Posts about Projects

I figured I would let you in on the projects that I will be posting about soon. Since I am traveling quite a bit these next few days I should have some down time in the hotel and on the plane to catch up a bit on the postings.

Nandin Dvor Golf Resort - 18 Hole golf course resort, conference center, housing, botique hotel. Biggest challenge, the 10-15 Hectare of lakes we are building on the site.

Anna Volgy Golf Club - 18 Hole Championship Golf Course, Clubhouse, Vineyards, Wine Chatues, Small hotel, golf academy. The site has an average of 30 meters of eleveation change!

Ronava Golf Community - 18 Hole golf course, housing edition, community center. This will be the first course in Slovakia dedicated to training and educating future golfers.

Trebostovo Resort - Too big to explain here!

Okko Golf - 18 Hole golf course, golf bungalows, apartments, housing, entertainment complex, casino, hotel(s), conference center. This project just keeps growing, and it is located in the most beautiful locationin Slovakia.

Oxmoor Country Club - One hole redesign, maybe more in the near future?

There are a couple of projects I may post about that we finished already just to show everyone some of our work. I will see what I have still on the computer.

Oxmoor Country Club

Oxmoor Country Club holds a dear place in my heart. When I lived in Kentucky and first started my golf course construction and consultation business I had plenty of work. Too much work at first, and I made some stupid decisions because of being overworked. It was during this time I stepped back and returned to course maintenance to get refocused on why I enjoy golf course design, construction and management…it has always been that love of the game, the smell of the grass, watching dirt being shaped and slowly turn from brown to green. To this day, watching sprinklers turn on in the early dew morning gives my chills. I remembered all this while I worked at Oxmoor as a crew leader, and landscape design consultant. I only stayed on for a short time, but that time really allowed me to get refocused.

While at the course I did several design proposals for the Superintendent, David Sullivan. There were many issues facing the course; safety, leaking ponds, bunkers needing reshaped, trees needing removal, among other things. I really wanted to implement these changes, but lack of budget and time always won out.

Well, i finally got the chance to look at the course again last year. For now, it is just a one hole redesign. The 15th, a medium length Par 4 with many problems, but that is for the next post.

Ronava Golf Community

The Final Golf Course Master Plan is finished and we are currently working with the developers on the initial permits for the housings addition and the clubhouse & community center.

We will soon be restarting the Environmental Impact Assesment report after a short hiatus due to several issues in the planning. Like all planning, in never goes as planned?!

Ronava Golf Community - Housing Addition

This will be agreat opportunity for us in Slovakia. With all our current projects, we are developing housing additions in or around the golf courses. Since there are no golf communities in Slovakia at the present, this is a new concept for many, including the authorities, who are constantly asking questions about the development. After talking with many developers and potential investors in the housing areas, it is evident that there will be several obsticles to overcome. Authorities for one, but most importantly, the potential homeowners.


The trend in Slovakia (as many countries in this region) is to put a huge wall around you property so no one can see in, but this also means that no one can see in. And, when you are buying a home on a golf course, besides potentil resale, views tend to be one of the most important factors. You can see we have a big conflict. Not only do we want the home owners to enjoy their view onto the course, we don’t want the golfers to feel they are playing in a prison with walls on either side of the hole. This is a big problem with a few of our courses, but not as much with Ronava since we have created the housing addition seperate from the golf course.

In the Ronava development, we are trying to create a more open community though. We have laid out the addition with three Phases. Each Phase has a park and walking trails that will connect to the next Phase and its respective park area. The main entrance into the community will be the single entrance and lead straight to the community center and golf clubhouse. Access roads will lead of this main road and into each Phase. Each Phase will also be connected through back roads that lead to the community center. All roads will be tree lined and have sidewalks. At the entrance to the community center & clubhouse, the road will bridge across a lake and then split to the right and left, with both having access to the community center & clubhouse.

We hope that by creating a park atmosphere within the development, not backing housing up to each other, and creating several small communities within the larger develoment, we can introduce this new style of house development to Slovakia…No Walls!

Okko Golf - Slovakia

On Tuesday I headed up to our newest project in Slovakia, Okko Golf, in Velky Slavkov. The site is near the town of Poprad and at the foot of the Velky Tatry (High Tatras). What a beautiful view to the mountains from the site. (I will insert a photo here once I learn to do that)
My wife Daniela and our Dog, Kali, went along with me on this trip. The purpose of the visit was to walk the routing of the 18 hole course, to finalize locations for golf bungalows, the exact placement for the clubhouse, and review options for a 6-9 hole golf academy.

It was a fantastic day, besides the 30mph wind gust coming down the mountain slopes. That is the prevailing wind, not usually as strong, but it is always there. During the walk around I determined that we needed to shorten a few holes facing the mountains and lengthen a few running away from the mountains. It was pretty evident from the first hole (360 meter Par 4 facing the highest peak in the range, Gerlachovský Peak. It is now about 335-340 meters).
At the end of the day we accomplished everything we set out to do. The clubhouse has been situated, the bungalows are arranged, the course has been minorly altered (mostly to ease it up a bit), and we have 2-3 concepts for the golf academy.

I hope to get some images uploaded soon to share. My next visit to the site is on the 20th of April with building architects.

Off to China

Well, I am off to China this weekend to review two projects in planning near Shanghai. I always enjoy China, but never the trip there.

First I will be reviewing a redesign project. We have been reviewing the current layout and consulting with the operators on minor changes. After extensive discussions and problem solving, I believe they will be making a major renovation.

The biggest problem seems to be the lack of any real shaping or contouring to the course. Also, there are several creeks and ponds on the course and none of them have really been utilized in the design strategy. It is also a very difficult course for the average play. The one thing that struck me the most was that I never really knew where I was on the course. This can be a good thing, but on this course it was due to every hole looking the same.

It was a real shame to see what was going on at the course the first time I visited. They have a great location, the facility is developing quite nicely, but the course would not promote repeat play.

Let’s hop that things go well and we can get the proper changes made to improve this course!

Welcome to the Blog

Hello Everyone!
Welcome to my new blog site. Currently it is a mirror image of my developing site at www.BrandenWilburn.com Over the next several weeks I will be organizing and creating the look and structure of this site so that we may all study, discuss, and learn about golf courses, golf course design, construction, maintenance, and everything else involved in the golf course industry. We will also look more into the philosophies of design, not just golf related, but design in the larger scale. What it means, what are the concepts, the reasons behind it, anything and everything.

Some of the sections within this blog will be:
Notes from the field (my daily journal as I travel around to different projects, site visits, client meetings)
Project Updates (detailed updates of the current status of each of our projects)
Daily News Topic (a brief discussion about a current event related to golf, design, construction)
Articles (a collection of articles written by myself, my staff, and various contractors & friends within the industry)
Links (a collection of my favorite golf & non-golf sites on the web)

There will be more sections as time comes and the development of this blog grows. I hope to hear from many of you as we discuss topics and update you on projects. Please let me know what you like, don’t like, and give your suggestions on ways to improve this site. Also, please visit my golf course & landscape architecture website: GolfDesignStudio.com

Thanks, I look forward to sharing our thoughts on golf.

Branden