Talisker has teed up the construction of a much-anticipated golf course at Canyons.
Speaking at a groundbreaking event Tuesday morning, Canyons Managing Director Mike Goar said he expects golfers to begin playing the course in 2013.
“Technically, the golf course construction is underway and will be underway in earnest next spring,” Goar said. “It’s been a long time coming, a lot of hard work by a lot of people.”
The proposed links were supposed to open in 2002. Property owners came together in the late 1990s to form The Canyons Specially Planned Area. Included in the development agreement was an 18-hole golf course, which some landowners promised to build in cooperation with each other.
Sun Peak resident Brenda Hall said she blames bickering and legal wrangling among the landowners for holding up the start of construction.
“We have been owners in Sun Peak on the golf course for 12 years and before we even bought the house there were rumors of the golf course,” Hall said in an interview before Tuesday’s groundbreaking. “The obstinance of property owners around this golf course is the biggest single factor that has delayed this course.”
The Canyons golf course will be open to the public. Hall said more public courses are needed in the Park City area.
“You can’t just say this is another golf course,” Hall said. “We desperately needed this golf course.”
Canyons was owned by American Skiing Company when construction of the golf course was supposed to begin. Today Talisker owns the ski resort. But American Skiing Co. worked with landowners and county officials more than a decade ago to form Canyons.
“Great thanks to those 12 years ago who had the vision to create a golf course here,” Talisker founder Jack Bistricer said at Tuesday’s groundbreaking. “A lot of people put a lot of effort into this.”
Famed designer Gene Banks has been tapped to oversee construction of the golf course, Bistricer said.
“They have promised that this is going to be a great course,” Bistricer said. “It’s all part and parcel to creating a mountain resort that is all season.”
Except for holes 13, 14 and 15, the proposed course is envisioned mostly north and west of Canyons Resort Drive, which is the ski area’s main thoroughfare.
“When the first thought about a golf course at the Canyons surfaced, I thought this would be a great opportunity And then 10 years later nothing had happened,” Banks said. “I believe that we’ll exceed everyone’s expectations.”
Tuesday’s ceremony happened near the edge of the proposed ninth hole, a 380-yard drive that starts northwest of Waldorf Astoria Park City. Hole 10, a roughly 500-yard par 5, will sit higher on the mountain.
“It’s going to be quite exciting,” Banks said.
Meanwhile, the new golf course could also create jobs for people living in Summit County.
“This is about golf, but it’s also about short- and long-term economic development,” Summit County Manager Bob Jasper said. “Jobs and a viable economy now is what’s important to our citizens What you really have now is the ability to move forward and develop the Canyons in a reasonable way.”
With the course in limbo, selling real estate at the resort was difficult, Realtor David Lawson said.
“From a real-estate standpoint, people have been waiting for this golf course to buy at the Canyons,” Lawson said in an interview at Tuesday’s groundbreaking.