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| OHCC LIVING | JANUARY 2020 | 7 The Genesis of the Golf course Renovation By Don Lopez If I am going to discuss the genesis of the golf course renovation project I feel like I should start by saying "in the beginning there was golf!" I couldn't resist that. Actually this project started when we had a safety inspection of the golf course by our insurance company, Labarre/Oksnee. They found that our bunkers were not safe for entry or exit and some other issues. We began to examine what should be done to make the course safer and easier to maintain. We were also working with the city of Oceanside to obtain reclaimed water for the golf course, which would bring our costs way down and guarantee an adequate supply of water during water restrictions. Oceanside promised us we would be first to receive reclaimed water as they worked their way back from Oceanside to the reclamation center in San Luis Rey. They finally changed their mind and said they would start near the center in San Luis Rey and work their way toward Oceanside, which would take about 10 years. That is when we decided to drill our own well. As you know, we drilled the well and now have a good volume of water for our golf course and part of the common area. However, the quality of our well water is very high in TDS, Totally Dissolved Solids. This means as part of our golf course renovation we will have to have a pond to pump the well water into, blend it with potable water, then irrigate the turf with the blended water. This will still provide us with significant savings on our water costs. We will tear out all the current irrigation lines and replace them with new pipes. Because of the water quality in the well it cannot be put into potable water lines. We will also have to replace all the drain lines to make the system work properly. These lines are well past their useful life and need to be replaced just to be more efficient. While the course is being dug up to replace the irrigation system, it would be an ideal time to repair the portions of the course that have deteriorated over 35 years of heavy use. We have engaged two golf course architects to address the irrigation system and the golf course renovation that is needed. The objectives of their designs are to provide the irrigation required, more efficient maintenance, better safety, and improve the playability for players of all skill levels. The Golf Course Irrigation & Renovation Committee drafted a detailed Request For Proposal, RFP, that both of the designers are responding to. They must provide these items as a minimum, but they may use their creativity on how to provide those items. Yale Hooper, and Denice Armijo from Van Dyke Landscape provided expertise to help write the RFP properly. Please keep in mind that our golf course was designed as a nine hole golf course and a park. We eventually added another nine holes where the park was. However, we never changed the irrigation to adequately irrigate a golf course. Our golf course architects have diplomatically pointed out to us, that some of the additions that have been made on the course were obviously made by those who were not golf course designers. This will be the right time to address those issues. We reviewed their first proposals in November and their second proposal on Dec. 5, 2019. We will receive their third and final proposal in January of 2020. We will then review them and make a decision on the best proposal. The golf course renovation committee will then make a recommendation to the Master Board for approval. We hope to have the successful designer start their final design and construction documents in January of 2020. This is the first of more articles to come in the future. I will keep you informed on the progress on all of these details as we go forward. This is a large project with several moving parts, which will require regular updating as we go forward.

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