Ground has been broken on a new golf course at City Park in New Orleans.

Designed by the Rees Jones Golf Course Design firm and the project has been handled by the firm’s senior vice president Greg Muirhead.

At one point the site of four courses, City Park suffered significant damage when Hurricane Katrina struck the area in August 2005, with a nearby levee system breaking and causing billions of gallons of saltwater to flood the area.

City Park’s North course reopened in 2008, and Rees Jones Golf Course Design was hired in 2007 by the Torre Design Consortium, the entity under contract with the State of Louisiana. The firm was hired as a subcontractor to work alongside the PGA Tour staff to outline design plans for a new 18-hole course at the site.

“Our final routing encompasses portions of the old East and West courses, including some of the old hole corridors that are framed by the mature live oaks and bordered by existing lagoons,” Muirhead told GCA back in October 2014. “Accordingly, our design heavily incorporates those site features as strategic elements. In addition, in order to preserve the trees and maintain the existing ‘pastoral’ quality of the site, we will implement a ‘low-profile’ design style that minimises the amount of fill placed throughout the course.”

“The green complexes will not be super-elevated and the bunkers will not be excessively deep,” he said. “Green contours will be more subtle and understated. Although the course will measure in excess of 7,200 yards from the championship markers, the emphasis will really be on accuracy and positioning the ball in the proper portion of the fairway off the tee, in order to have the best angle into the green.”

The course will be complemented by a new clubhouse, and construction is slated to finish in February 2017.