Building a golf Range

[leftcoastsrt04]

A few guys at work and I were talking about buying a decent piece of land locally and building a respectable golf range. Anyone know the cost to build one of these? Up keep? There is a town about 30 min from here with no course and no range near by, and the town is full of correction officers and other law enforcement and we figure it would be a great place to stick a range. Any range owners out there?

[shortys408]

I would imagine if you have hitting mats it would be cheaper to maintain the hitting area, but people like hitting off real grass better. Make sure there are accurate yardages, decent balls, and its not a must but I like a range that has actual greens you can land on. Also I like ranges that have practice putting greens, chipping greens, and a practice bunker.

[leftcoastsrt04]

We have 3 golf courses with ranges within 7 miles of us right now. One range looks like you are hitting into a paintball field, another range you cant see where your balls land cause they have never watered it, and the best one has a big ditch on the left side and you can only tell how far you hit it if you hit it near the markers. In my head, this thing is going to be everything a golfer wants in a range.

[iacas]

There are at least two or three other threads on this topic on this forum. I don't remember the titles of the threads, but I bet with a combination of Google and this site's search you can find them.

If you're serious about this, you might consider trying to find a PGA Pro to be in an Academy of some type at your range. You lease the building to him, provide him range balls, and he gives you a percentage of his lessons. You can work out some things (like maybe a discount for his students on range balls) that are mutually beneficial.

[right handed phil mickelson]

There's also usually a different final product than what you originally pictured in your head. I'm sure that what you want to be every golfers dream in a range will cost a bit more than you expect, and you're not going to be able to accomplish all of those goals. I looked into a little of this myself, but saw that there were way too many factors incorporated with building a range/ golf facility which made my ADHD go crazy so I just looked for about 15 minutes and then remembered there were some more oreos in the kitchen...

This might help you out a bit: http://www.golf-research-group.com/s...ing_range.html

[leftcoastsrt04]

So I was doin a little digging today. Well I live in the valley and apparently driving ranges have not been too successful around here. The place I was looking at is near two prisons and a state hospital roughly around close to 10,000 state workers. (So far the research has been totally fascinating) There used to be a golf course near by that was pretty successful "back in the day" but has been closed for some time. At one point the course had a deal with the prison near by to have prisoners do all the up keep but the state realized they were putting out money to provide free labor. Then the place was having issues getting water cause it was so far out in the middle of nowhere. 3 owners later and its closed.

The city golf course was bought by the city from a private owner because it was going under and right now they are barely able to keep it decent. The 9 hole course down the road is in bad shape because of alkali. The course the next town over is only open for tax reasons and lots of law suits were involved with well diggers and construction guys and the current club house is a single wide. So far it is not looking good.

[senorchipotle]

isn't land out in cali like a bazillion dollars an acre? i'd be more worried about that, than anything. a driving range is pretty inexpensive to operate, but there is a lot of upkeep. rotating balls, fertilizing/seeding grass, etc. you say that the soil is alkaline? this is bad for growing grass. take a pH test and it will let you know whether or not the piece of property is even worth bothering with. you'll have to take one from various spots on the land, and you'll want it to do a drainage test.

[Gebus]

If you say there aren't many driving ranges around you you might be able to get away with having a "cheaper" driving range. Around here there is a driving range on every corner each having their own little thing that the others don't. I work at a golf course whose driving range isn't pretty and the turf is horrible but its cheap so it works. When I really feel like practicing there is a driving range close by that has great mats and a grass section that is "private" (they only allow very capable golfers on the grass so it doesn't get chewed up to fast), Brand new balls every year, this year they are Srixons, and there are real greens everywhere at different distances, but as you can imagine its very expensive...
My big suggestion is to make save money on grass and balls and invest in lighting so that you can run you driving range late, that is where the money is...