New driving range is driving costs up
In your article of April 3, 2014 regarding budget overruns for the renovation of the Mount Prospect Golf course, you failed to recognize the most egregious cause of the overruns, that being the desire to include an enlarged state-of-the-art driving range and golf teaching facility.
The proposed new driving range would be relocated to another part of the property and increased to 300+ yards in length with an additional 15 to 20 additional driving spaces.
This feature, which the architect has estimated to cost $520,000, would require that the first hole be redesigned and present holes 10, 11, 12, 13 and 18 be totally redesigned and relocated.
It should be apparent that elimination of this driving range would preclude the need to redesign the six holes and bring the other proposed repairs and improvements well within the district's hoped-for budget.
The other potential drawback to inclusion of this driving range is the impact that bringing 20 to 25 additional patrons to the golf course on summer weekends will have on parking in the neighborhood since golfers alone presently fill the available parking spaces and spill out on to neighboring streets.
Efforts to scale back on design features for the needed irrigation and drainage and other improvements have the potential to cheapen the final result and the district's stated goal of producing a golf course that will stand the test of use and play for the next 50+ years.
Robert F. Kawalek
Mount Prospect