Riverchase Country Club undergoes $1 million renovation

The Riverchase Country Club is undergoing a $1 million renovation project to repair and refurbish its golf course and modernize its casual family dining area, club officers said.

Thanks to donations from club members, the club in recent years has spent about $750,000 to redo its swimming pool, renovate the tennis courts, add six new pickleball courts and add a deck overlooking the ninth green, Vice President Robert Yeager said.

Pretty much every piece of the property has been improved in the last several years except the golf course, and club officers felt the golf course needed the same level of attention to maintain the long-term health of the club, President Phillip Miles said.

A majority of club members agreed, with 81% voting to increase their membership fees and make the improvements, Miles said.

Most of the golf course improvements were to be done in July and August, including redoing tee boxes, building new tee boxes, repairing some bunkers, eliminating some bunkers and building a few new bunkers, Miles said.

In particular, Riverchase wanted to upgrade some of its shorter-distance tees because there are so many more women, seniors and juniors playing golf these days, Miles said. Golf courses around the country are experiencing this, he said.

The country club also will be removing a couple of hundred trees — anything affecting the tee boxes and the greens, he said.

Another big part of the job is to replace a 1,400-foot storm drain pipe that has deteriorated on the eighth hole, causing the ground around the pipe to sink, Miles said. That problem is part of a lawsuit between the country club and the Riverchase Residential Association.

The country club sued the residential association, saying the association was responsible for drainage pipes that carry stormwater from multiple parts of the Riverchase development and that deteriorating pipes were creating erosion problems and causing hazards for people.

The lawsuit, filed in April 2020, is still pending, but the country club decided it couldn’t wait any longer to get the pipe on the eighth hole replaced, Miles said.

Then in October, all the cart paths at Riverchase will be repaved, with the goal of completing the golf course work by Nov. 1, he said.

Next year, the casual family dining room in the clubhouse will be modernized. The exact plan for that is still being developed, but the club has set aside about $200,000 for that upgrade, Miles said.

Some of the country club officers have been contemplating golf course upgrades for years. A flooding event from a heavy rainstorm on Oct. 6-7 forced the club to make a move after the country club received 9 inches of rain in three hours and 12 inches over a 24-hour period, he said.

“Our golf course and many parts of our property were severely damaged in that flood,” Miles said. “It caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to our golf course.”

In-house staff members have been able to make incremental repairs.

“They’ve put in an amazing effort to make our golf course playable. We’re definitely very thankful for what they’ve done,” Miles said. But the course needs more significant work that requires bigger and more specialized equipment, he said.

Riverchase hired Club Life Management, a consulting group, to help develop a 10-year long-term plan and hired John LaFoy, a golf course architect from Greenville, South Carolina, as an advisor.

Club officers say they hope these new improvements, combined with other recent upgrades, will help boost membership. The club had dropped to about 330 members, and membership was flat for several years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but golf courses and country clubs have gotten busier since the pandemic hit, and there now are about 370 members at Riverchase, Miles said.

They’re ready to see that number continue to grow, he said. “We’re really excited about it.”