Second Boulder City municipal course planned

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2001 | 11:07 a.m.

By 6:30 a.m. the pro shop telephone at the Boulder City municipal golf course has been ringing off the hook for 45 minutes and callers are settling for afternoon tee-times for the following week.

It's the same story every day. When pro shop employees show up around 5:45 a.m., the early birds, who reserved their round of golf exactly seven days before, are already limbering up at the first tee. They're the first of about 250 golfers who hit the links sun-up to sundown, year-round for 18 holes of the cheapest golf in the Las Vegas Valley. The price for locals using a cart is $25.

"One of the complaints I get most often is that there aren't enough tee times," Councilman Bryan Nix said. "We have to turn them away in droves."

That should change. Not soon, but by fall next year.

The City Council has plans to build a second municipal golf course officials say could provide at least another 65,000 rounds of golf each year. The existing course crams in about 85,000 rounds annually.

There are also plans for two additional private courses, one that could be built by Park Place Entertainment and a second by Red Ridge Golf.

City officials estimate that the new municipal course, planned for 450 acres of undeveloped desert southeast of Veterans Memorial Drive and Adams Boulevard, would bring the city as much as $1.5 million in profit annually and create as many as 20 new jobs.

There appears to be no opposition to the golf course on the City Council.

"A second public golf course will continue to foster the clean, green atmosphere that we like in Boulder City," Councilman Joe Hardy said. "It will not pollute and in fact it will make our city even better than it is already." Council members tonight are expected to approve unanimously plans to contract with Swisher and Hall Architects for the design of a $2 million clubhouse in an "early California style." The city would pay the firm about $160,000 to draft those plans.

The city has already contracted with architectural and management firms for three potential golf course designs.

Also tonight the council will likely send those three options out for construction bids.

Firms will submit bids on an 18-hole course, a 27-hole course and a 27-hole course with a 9-hole lighted course for night golfing.

Nix estimated the construction costs, including the clubhouse, at between $11 million and $16 million, depending on which option council members choose. They will be able to make a more informed decision once bids are received, he said.

Nix, chairman of the golf course committee, initiated the project in 1996. Construction crews could break ground as soon as May, he said, leaving enough time to plant grass in spring next year and open the course for play later that fall.

Design plans show a clubhouse bordered by a small lake, lush vegetation and waterfalls. Much of the course will cut across small canyons and through desert landscaping with fairways designed with water conservation in mind.

The city plans to finance the course by issuing revenue bonds and by dipping into the city's utility reserve funds. The city has about $11 million put aside from electric and water utilities and garbage services, Nix said.

The golf course also would purchase from the city about 900 acre-feet of untreated water per year to maintain an 18-hole course. At the proposed price of $1.50 per 1,000 gallons, that would mean revenue of about $440,000 annually -- more if a larger course is built. An acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons, is enough to supply a family of four or five for a year.

The money for water would be paid out of greens fees. Preliminary estimates have locals paying $45, Clark County golfers paying $55 and out-of-towners paying $75.

The projected annual profit of $1.5 million would help finance a second water pipeline the city plans to build in order to meet the projected increase in water demand. The new pipeline will cost $34 million.

In an effort to raise federal funding to defray some of that cost, the City Council will also consider tonight hiring a lobbying firm at a cost of $60,000 annually. Washington, D.C.-based Cassidy and Associates would be the first lobbying firm hired by the city.