Golf courses drive area’s economic development

Prattville, Ala., a town of 24,000 located just northwest of Montgomery, has a cypress swamp, beautiful trees and bluffs that overlook the Alabama River. But all that was not enough to draw tourists, who, if they knew of Prattville at all, knew of it only as a right-hand turn off I-85 heading west to Mississippi.

That changed when the town became home to the latest 54 holes of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. Named for legendary golf course designer Robert Trent Jones, who was 83 when the project began, the trail consists of eight courses across Alabama. It was financed by the Retirement System of Alabama specifically to expand tourism and attract new industry and retirees. With its 378 holes, it is the largest golf course construction project ever undertaken. Each site is within a two-hour drive of another, and all are located no more than 30 minutes away from an interstate highway.

Prattville’s new site, called Capitol Hill, will feature three 18-hole championship courses: The Senator, The Legislator and The Judge. The courses are designed to be drastically different from each other and from all other trail courses. (The trail also includes courses in Huntsville, Anniston/Gadsden, Birmingham, Auburn/Opelika, Greenville, Dothan and Mobile.) The Senator, completed last year, features a traditional Scottish-style links layout with few trees and little water, while The Judge is being built along the 200-acre Cooters Pond and will feature several water-bordering holes.

The Legislator, which opened in July, is considered the most scenic of the three courses. “On the front line, there are three holes located along the top of the bluff 200 feet high overlooking Cooters Pond and the Alabama River,” says John Cannon, director of golf operations at the facility. A cypress swamp and wildlife habitats complete the course.

Cannon says 250 to 300 golfers play the two open courses every Saturday. He expects that number to jump to 500 to 600 players, 60 percent of them out-of-staters, when all three courses are up and running.

The project was endorsed by Prattville Mayor David Whetstone and members of the city council, who approved an expenditure of $6.5 million to buy the property on which the courses are located. (The total price tag for the three courses is $22.5 million.) The nearby city of Millbrook and Elmore County also pledged a portion of future lodging taxes to help pay for Capitol Hill.

After Whetstone’s sudden death last June, Jim Byard, who, as city council president, inherited the mayor’s office, continued to support the project. “It took a great deal of cooperation from both public and private entities to make this project a reality,” Byard says. “We basically had an opportunity that a lot of other municipalities don’t have. We funded the land for this project because we felt it would be an excellent economic development and tourism tool.”

“The whole concept of the trail is to get people to come to Alabama and stay for a few days instead of driving through to Florida or New Orleans,” Cannon says.

Capitol Hill also features The Legends at Capitol Hill, an executive conference center overlooking the courses. The $8 million center has 74 guest rooms, two eight-room corporate villas and state-of-the-art meeting rooms. The center is a project of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, an alliance of businesses committed to supporting economic growth in the state; it was funded through the Montgomery-based Business Center of Alabama, a trade organization representing more than 5,500 businesses and industries.