Naperville golfers received a little good news and a little bad courtesy of the Naperville Park Board.
On the positive side, Springbrook Golf Course is back to being fully in play after drought conditions caused a delay of its post-construction reopening and resulted in limited tee times.
“We are expecting, with a normal fall growing season, that the course will be back to our full maintenance standards with conditioning for all the new turf areas, the same as the rest of the golf course,” Kevin Carlson, Naperville Park District director of golf, told the board at last week’s meeting.
“July and August are important months for our Brooks Tournament Series,” he said. “We have four of our city championships scheduled during this time.”
The bad news, however, is at Naperbrook Golf Course, which will soon be closing its 18th tee temporarily. That site is to be used for a new golf training facility that will open in 2024 and requires the 18th hole be shortened and the tee moved.
“We’ve waited until the fall to do this phase just so we would minimize the impact on general play,” Carlson said. “What we would do is we’d shorten the 18th hole, so instead of playing it from the full length they would play it on a shorter distance. And we’d move the tees basically up to the fairway area.”
The project’s lone bidder was Wadsworth Golf Construction, which proposed doing the job for $243,443. The board will vote on that contract at its Aug. 10 meeting. Work will include building a new tee and fairway bunker and making drainage improvements.
In unrelated news, Finance Director Sue Stanish told the board the park district may be switching banks after working with BMO Harris for a number of years. For the first time since 2006, the park district put out requests for proposals for banking services.
The finance committee is recommending switching to Wintrust and its Naperville Bank & Trust branch. The board plans to vote on that change at its Aug. 10 meeting as well.
“There were four criteria that we rated the banks on … services provided; location — that’s very important for us because we’re doing a lot of daily drops of actual cash deposits during our busy season; fees and interest earnings; and district and community support,” Stanish said.
The board also approved deals to complete two large projects. The contract to install synthetic turf on the infields at DuPage River Sports Complex field No. 5 was awarded to Midwest Excavators for $147,783. A contract to erect new chain link fencing and backstop netting at Knoch Park field No. 7 was awarded to Action Fence Contractors for $129,500.
Giles Bruce is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.