The first notion of a premier public golf course
butting up against the Byron Forest Preserve District's
restored prairie land began quite innocently, spawned
by a handful of area golf enthusiasts who recognized
the region's appetite and marketplace desire for
a championship-caliber golf experience.
Late in the 1980s, with crude course layout sketches
penned on a napkin, the group presented their initial
dreams for the 159 acres of fallow cropland to
the Forest Preserve. Informal discussions were
embraced and were soon followed by market and feasibility
studies, funding explorations, site surveys, land-use
and environmental planning, and, eventually, a
formal course-development resolution. The course,
later to be named "PrairieView", was,
indeed, on its way to becoming a reality.
William James Spear & Associates, with their
firm's solid reputation for designing courses of
laudable merit throughout the Midwest (including
the Amana Colonies Golf Course), was retained for
carrying out the strategic design and course architecture
duties. Ryan Incorporated Central, one of the nation's
leading golf course construction firms (Glen Club,
Whisper Creek, and Harborside International) was
selected to translate skillfully and efficiently
the vision and architectural master plans into existence.
Ground was broken and construction commenced early
in 1990. Favorable weather combined with aggressive
excavation, shaping and construction activities
to permit initial seeding/grassing operations in
late summer, followed by secondary seeding/grassing
in the spring of 1991. And on May 2, 1992, PrairieView
made its ceremonious and long-awaited debut to
the public, one day after the commemoration of
its clubhouse facility.
COURSE CONSTRUCTION HIGHLIGHTS
- 200,000 cubic yards of dirt movement/excavation
- four miles of drainage pipe installed
- six miles
of irrigation pipe installed
- 100 miles of electrical
wire installed for the
irrigation system
- 575 irrigation heads installed
- eight tons of
grass seed and 25 tons of fertilizer used
- three
miles of erosion mats and 5000
bales of hay placed
- 40-million gallons of water used during
grassing
- 150,000-square-feet of sand bunkers
created
- hundreds of trees moved/relocated and
planted
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