The Institute Golf Course has taken a lot of flack recently over
its seven year development of an old 9-hole golf course into a
state-of-the-art 18-hole course on the Foothill Avenue grounds of
the old Flying Lady Restaurant.
The Institute Golf Course has taken a lot of flack recently over its seven year development of an old 9-hole golf course into a state-of-the-art 18-hole course on the Foothill Avenue grounds of the old Flying Lady Restaurant.
Corralitos Creek, LLC, the property owners, including local resident John Fry of Fry’s Electronics, intend the course to be a recreational tool, along with hiking and jogging trails, when the American Institute of Mathematics, which Fry also founded, moves from Palo Alto to Morgan Hill. The way has not been smooth.
On Thursday Steve Sorenson, a partner in the AIM and Corralitos Creek, LLC, attempted to explain some misconceptions over what the group has and has not done to change the 192-acre project and how they are working to make amends. He was joined by Randy Long, owner of RCL Ecology, the firm hired by Corralitos to coordinate biological issues concerning water and wildlife habitat.
Sorenson and Long particularly wanted to dispel accusations that they had realigned Corralitos Creek, disturbing endangered or protected wildlife along the way. They wanted to make it clear that, with their chemical application management plan, nitrates from fertilizer is not running off to pollute nearby streams and wells; nor have they removed many trees.
And they want Morgan Hill residents to know that they are improving the area far beyond its Flying Lady days by planting thousands of trees, landscaping sensibly and restoring the creek. They also do not want residents to forget that the AIM is a world-renowned institute that will bring dozens of mathematics researchers to town.
“The Institute has solved more mathematical problems than any other,” Sorenson said. As a bonus, Brian Conrey, the AIM executive director who lives in Morgan Hill, has involved himself in raising the level of student interest in math at the Morgan Hill Charter School.
Sorenson said a method of continuous testing keeps the levels of nitrates applied to the grass equal to the levels of nitrates (in fertilizer) required by the grass, with the result that none is expelled in runoff.
“The grass actually cleanses the water,” Sorenson said. “Samples show there is less nitrate in the grass than in the water taken from wells.”
How this works, he said, is that clippings taken from grass, samples from soil and well water are regularly sent to a laboratory which determines how much fertilizer the grass needs. Since the well water contains some nitrate, that amount is deducted from the amount of fertilizer to be applied, making it all come out even with nothing left over to pollute neighboring wells.
“We don’t get runoff at all,” Long said, “except through one lake at the bottom of the property that acts as flood control.”
Yvonne Arroyo, assistant engineer with the Community Projects Review Unit of the Santa Clara Valley Water District said this makes sense to her and that other golf courses do this on a regular basis.
“But we haven’t seen their plan yet,” she said of The Institute’s course. The CPRU evaluates development plans and follows up on developments in error – which she said this is.
Long said the creek area criticized by the Water District was pretty much devoid of trees when Corralitos Creek bought the property.
“Irv (Perlitch, the Flying Lady owner) had an asphalt road running along the creek,” he said. “The area was farmed and most of the trees were gone by 1956.” Long said he had compared photographs from that year with ones taken in the late 1990s and the trees were not there.
Arroyo said the story is “believable” knowing what the Water District does about the Flying Lady operation.
“The earliest topo (topographical map or aerial photo) we have is from the early 1970s,” she said. “That still shows the creek contours as a continuous creek with areas already filled in. They claimed it was already like that and that’s why they put the golf course there.” Arroyo said her unit would have had them restore the creek.
“It was believable (the explanation) but they made it worse,” she said. “They still need a permit from us for any work within 50-feet of the “topo bank” (the obvious creek area).”
Both Sorenson and Long said they will be restoring the creek as suggested, from a list of native and appropriate plants and they will, indeed, fill in the contour in question.
“The standard is to take seeds from the same watershed, using local natives,” Arroyo said. She said she would prefer the new trees to be drought tolerant. The course is lush with newly planted Italian Cypresses, pines, redwoods, sycamores, crepe myrtles and a few yellow poplars, plus Live Oaks, new and old. A few pepper trees can be seen growing in the creek bed.
Sorenson said it is a myth that golf courses are inherently anti-environmental and insists that, with proper management, the function as the opposite – environmentally sound areas. And, with the newly buffered and restored creek, he said the red-legged frogs and Tiger salamanders – the endangered animals in question – are finding bigger and better places to inhabit.
Rabbits have begun to take over a redwood forest area surrounding part of the hiking trail, and ground squirrels – a favorite of Sorenson – are popping up everywhere.
Sorenson said the group has been working diligently with the city’s planning and building departments to smooth the way for the major renovation of the old restaurant building into the AIM’s conference center.
“When the city signs off on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report), we will have the plans ready to submit for the Institute building,” Sorenson. “Not a minute will lapse.”
Details: www.aimath.org
