Dubai Festival City unveiled an environmentally conscious design for its 18-hole recreational golf course that will open in September 2003. The 7,250 yards, par 72, course, which will be rich in water features and with plants indigenous to the Arabian Gulf. The Dubai Festival City course will be Dubai's sixth 18-hole golf facility.
The course has been designed by Robert Trent Jones, California's internationally acclaimed golf course architectural firm. It will form the center of Dubai Festival City's golfing community, which will include the clubhouse, a golf academy, executive town homes, apartments and a 150-room boutique hotel.
The design sculpts a course that integrates with Dubai Festival City's waterfront environment. It incorporates 10 lakes and several smaller ponds. The golf course project will feature a floodlit driving range, sports academy and clubhouse. Interwoven throughout the course will be over 300 housing units, Dubai Festival City's first residential offering.
Around a million gallons of water a day will be needed to irrigate the course. This is about one-third less than would have been required if the more conventional bermuda grass had been used.
To make the most efficient use of water resources, the course design also minimizes the total acreage of maintained turf, without compromising the shot values, playability or feeling of expansiveness in the fairways around the greens. The course will also make extensive use of plants native to the Gulf to give a natural effect.
To facilitate the relief and contouring of the course, some six million cubic meters of sand excavated from the Dubai International Airport expansion project is being transported to the Dubai Festival City site. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
