Biz Buzz/Golf

Monarch Dunes at the Woodlands, the first public golf course to be completed in the mammoth Nipomo Woodlands development, will open by the first of the year.

 

Its clubhouse, including a restaurant and golf shop, will open next week. The Scottish links-styled, 18-hole, 6,800-yard championship course was designed by Damian Pascuzzo, a Cal Poly graduate and partner of Graves and Pascuzzo, a golf architecture firm in El Dorado Hills.

 

Monarch Dunes will be managed by KemperSports, which also manages Palm Springs' Desert Willow, Black Gold in Yorba Linda and Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco.

 

"This is truly a unique golf course and the only one in the county patterned after the traditional links in Scotland and Ireland," said Mark Luthman, KemperSports regional director. "It's very rugged looking, with native fescue grasses, beach grasses and natural sand dunes. It mimics the appearance of nearby dunes, using shaped dunes instead of the traditional grassy mounds, and there will be a number of holes from where you can see the ocean."

 

Pascuzzo said the golf course was built from the sand on the site. The course's green fees have not yet been set, but they will be on par with other local golf courses, Luthman said. The Woodlands development, which began construction in April 2004, will take 10 to 15 years to build. It will include 1,320 homes, two 18-hole courses and one nine-hole course, a business park, a 500-room hotel, riding and hiking trails, a shopping center, and a 12-acre park.

 

John Scardino, the project's developer and the owner of the Monarch Dunes Golf Club, has acquired, planned, developed or constructed more than $1.2 billion in California and Texas real estate.

 

By the time the project is finished, the Woodlands could become the largest mixed-use development in county history.

 

-- Melanie Cleveland