A team from Hills Forrest International Golf Course Architects are leading a restoration and renovation project at the Oneida Golf and Country Club in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Oneida GCC is the oldest private club in Green Bay, and its course was originally designed by Stanley Pelcher.

In 2015, the club hired Hills Forrest to create a masterplan for its course. GCA caught up with Shawn Smith from the firm to find out how the project was coming along.

“We’re focusing on updating and improving the golf facilities with an emphasis on restoring the original classic architectural features that had been lost over the years,” Smith said.

The project team initially began with tee and practice facility improvements at the club back in autumn 2015.

“Aided by an aerial photograph from 1938, we began Phase I of a bunker improvement plan this spring, which consists of rebuilding their most problematic bunkers from a maintenance standpoint,” Smith said. “The large sand flash bunkers that were prone to washouts and contamination are being replaced with flat floored bunkers with fescue grass faces, consistent with the original design.”

In addition to the new bunkers, the team is expanding the greens out to their original dimensions and recapturing pin positions that Smith says have been lost for decades. 

“In an effort to maximise the strategic value of the new bunkers, we are dumping the fairways directly into the leading edge of the bunkers and the collars of the greens roll over the slope into the bunkers,” Smith explained.

The first phase of the project will be completed later this month, with the second phase set to commence in the autumn.