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(Article appeared in the March 15, 2026 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 1) Dense fog covers the closed driving range at Ruth Park Golf Course in University City on Feb. 19, 2026. After University City attempted to use leftover dirt from Market at Olive building project to improve the driving range, complications arose and closed the range. ‘Free dirt’ proves costly for Ruth Park driving range By Nassim Benchaabane | Post-Dispatch // Photos by Liz Rymarev UNIVERSITY CITY — The dirt was supposed to be a gift. Developers hoping to bring a Target store to Olive Boulevard needed a place to dump thousands of truckloads of excavated dirt. University City offered to take the dirt at its popular golf course's driving range, in hopes it would fix long-standing erosion and stormwater runoff problems. The project was supposed to take three months. The driving range at Ruth Park is still closed today. It's in worse condition than before. And it's on track to cost University City nearly $900,000 in lost revenue and future repairs. “The ‘free dirt’ and golf course improvements turned out to be not so free,” Darin Girdler, the city's parks director at the time, wrote in an internal memo in August. Records show the project was launched without a contract between the developer and the city, with no written plan for finishing the range after the dirt was dumped and graded, and without clear terms spelling out consequences if the job wasn't done correctly. Instead, city emails show, as the dirt sat there for months, and the erosion and runoff issues got worse, neither developers nor city officials took charge and solved the problems. University City did not make anyone available for an interview to explain how things went wrong. Former city manager Gregory Rose, Target developer Larry Chapman and excavation company Kolb Grading did not respond to requests for comment. Golfers and residents, meanwhile, have grown frustrated. One recent day, Jim Chambers, 69, of Shrewsbury, wondered whether the city should have taken the dirt at all. Chambers said he has golfed at Ruth Park for 32 years and almost always saw the driving range packed with golfers. The range would get muddy when it rained, and the cracks in the ground left behind would make it hard to retrieve the balls, Chambers said. But the range was still "nice," he said. "It was fine without the dirt," he said. "It’s all erosion now." A promise to fix the range The nine-hole University City Golf Course, as it was known then, opened in 1931. It was designed by Robert Foulis, who built some of the St. Louis region's most popular golf courses. It was well-liked by both casual and experienced golfers for its small size, ease and beauty. The driving range, which had space for 25 golfers to hit balls simultaneously, was added in 2008, in an attempt to generate more revenue at the course, which had been operating at a deficit for years. It worked. By 2019, the golf course was successful enough that the city parceled it out of the budget as an "enterprise fund," along with other revenue generators like public parking garages and the city's waste collection program. Annual revenue grew to more than $320,000 by July 2024. But the driving range was also starting to show signs of wear and tear. It sloped downhill from Groby Road toward a wooded area. The irrigation was poor; water pooled at the north end. Erosion caused cracks in the earth that made it impossible for machines to sweep up and retrieve the balls. The city attempted fixes over the years, including in late 2022, when it closed the range for several months to install pipes meant to help drain stormwater. But by 2024, the range was still closing every Wednesday morning so that workers could retrieve balls by hand from the cracks in the ground. Then, that summer, the city thought it found a fix. University City announced it had arranged for Chapman's company, Seneca CRE, to have Kolb move about 46,000 cubic yards of dirt to the golf course to build two more forward tees at the first hole, create a new practice green, level the driving range and add two more acres of grass tee space there. The dirt came from excavation at the construction site for the Market at Olive Project, a $211 million shopping plaza at Interstate 170 and Olive Boulevard that includes Costco, Chick-fil-A, and Target. It was the largest economic development project in University City history, received $70 million in tax incentives, pushed out dozens of longtime homeowners and businesses, and was projected to generate millions in sales tax revenues. In July 2024 about 200 trucks started hauling dirt from the shopping plaza to the golf course one mile down the road for about 28 days. The city promised to post monthly updates for the public. It never did. Eroded field section of driving range. 'Have you stopped work?' The city council never voted on the plan to take the dirt. City leaders, in response to a public records request, said they had no written agreement regarding the project. Instead, developers and officials said the dirt needed to be moved promptly in order to secure Target as a tenant at the Market at Olive, the city emails show. St. Louis County, while reviewing the plan to stockpile dirt at Ruth Park, asked the developers to check with the region's sewer agency, the Metropolitan Sewer District, for approval that the project wouldn't impact stormwater management or sewer drains near the range. Disagreement on drainage Chapman, the Seneca president, balked, arguing the dirt wouldn't change the way water flows on the driving range or create an impervious surface. In an email to officials including Rose, the city manager then, and County Executive Sam Page, he said if the work didn't start immediately, they'd have to pay $300,000 to move the dirt to St. Charles instead — or risk losing Target as a tenant. "All we’re trying to do is keep an important economic development project going forward and to help the City out by providing some desired fill material to their golf course," Chapman wrote in the July email. Rose wrote to the county asking it to issue the permit "as promptly as possible" because the work was "critical to economic development." The next day MSD approved the project without requiring a formal application, based on a plan that had been submitted by engineering firm Stock and Associates, whom Seneca had hired. The plan the county approved called for stockpiling and grading dirt across roughly 3.8 acres of the driving range. But neither city staff nor the developers appeared to have a detailed plan for how things would proceed. Email records show Seneca, Kolb and city officials bouncing questions back and forth over how much dirt would be moved and when, when the golf course would need to close, if the appropriate county, state and MSD protections were in place, and who was responsible for grading the dirt, laying sod or seeds down and making other finishing touches. In a late August email, Girdler, then the city parks chief, asked about the dirt sitting on the range. "Have you stopped work at the Golf Course?" Girdler wrote to Seneca and Kolb. "I don’t think you have finished all of the grading, have you?" In September, at least one complaint to the city parks commission said the new dirt made the downhill slope from Groby Road worse, and was actually blocking the view of targets down the range. County inspectors found that the dirt had overrun tarp fencing meant to keep it from seeping downhill into sewer inlets, that dust was getting kicked up into the air, and that failing to reseed the dirt for months only worsened erosion across the range. And golfers were taking notice. "In my humble opinion, our City Fathers made the mistake of believing the developers again," one resident, Steven Goldstein, wrote in an email to the city parks commission. "And the taxpayers will pay an excessive price for the 'once in a lifetime' gift of 'free dirt' at the driving range." 'Is there no way to hurry this up?' By spring of 2025, nothing had been resolved. Girdler told Seneca and Kolb that the dirt still needed to be graded again to match the original plans, that the drainage system needed to be fixed, and that the dirt needed to be seeded and irrigated. Chapman said Seneca had fulfilled its original agreement with University City, and gone above and beyond to grade the dirt a second time after golfers complained the range was too steep. He pushed the city to try to take ownership of the county land disturbance permit, which required the holder to maintain silt fencing and other stormwater protections, or hire a new contractor to take it over. "I just need to let MSD know we are done with our portion of the work," Chapman wrote in an email to Rose in late June. In August, University City paid $71,000 to hire Navigate Solutions, a construction consultant firm. Navigate told the city council it would take 13 months to fix the range, including hiring an engineering firm to come up with a new design, and applying for approval from MSD. City officials were frustrated. "Is there no way to hurry this up?" Mayor Terry Crow said at a council meeting then. "No offense, but this is like death by a thousand cuts." Girdler, in an internal memo, said employees were frustrated, too. "Many things were promised way back in May/June of 2024 that were not delivered on," Girdler wrote. "The City, at least staff, expected a finished project or at least mostly finished. It was never the intent of the City to be in the position to have to spend so much money or time on completing this project." Girdler left the city that month. He declined comment. 'It made a bad situation worse' The driving range is still violating county land disturbance and stormwater regulations, according to recent inspection reports. Brooke Sharp, now deputy city manager after Rose's retirement, acknowledged at a recent council meeting that city staff "didn't have a thorough explanation" of what went wrong. "Essentially the dirt was requested without a plan in place and it made a bad situation worse," Sharp said. The city has estimated it will cost at least $200,000 to hire a construction company to fix the range, in addition to payments to Navigate Solutions. The city did not provide an estimate for how much revenue it lost since the driving range's closure. But critics have pointed to the $300,000 it made the year before it closed, and estimated the city will have lost more than $600,000 by the time it reopens. This month, during a "state of the city" address, Mayor Crow vowed the project would get fixed. "Out of the goodness of our heart, and the fact that we really wanted Target to come here, we took a quarter of a million dollars worth of free dirt," said Crow, who is running for reelection April 7 and faces a challenge from Councilman Bwayne Smotherson. "And it’s been the most painful quarter of million dollars worth of free dirt I’ve ever had in my life." -
By boogielicious · Posted
I guess Arberg is now ARRRRRGBerg. Self destructing on the back nine. -
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By MentalityJohn · Posted
This is so cool that they did this, I wish they would do this casually more often -
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