_Oct/findinghigherground.jpg "Finding Higher Ground")
By Kyle Darbyson
After being demolished by floodwaters, Minot Country Club is flourishing in a new location
For more than 80 years, the Souris River was the lifeblood of Minot Country Club in North Dakota. The 435-mile long waterway meandered through the private club, providing scenic views, challenges on a few holes and more than enough water to irrigate the grounds. In summer 2011, it all changed in a flash.
An unusually snowy winter and wet spring had already raised water to alarming levels. Then, a major summer storm dumped historic levels of rain upriver in Canada, sending a wall of floodwater cascading down toward the club.
Mark Hildahl has been associated with Minot for more than 50 years, first as a junior member and now acting as its president. He remembers having just a few days to prepare the club. Members, staff and volunteers spent most of those days sandbagging.
“We built the highest dike we’d ever had in the city,” Hildahl recalls. They worked as long as they could, stopping only when officials forced them to evacuate on Wednesday, June 22.
Hildahl estimates the river broke through local levees around 5 p.m., the next day. It quickly inundated the course and poured over the sandbag barriers. “The water actually came up and stayed for three weeks,” he remembers. It was, according to many, a 500-year flood.
Once the water receded, Hildahl and other stakeholders toured the course. Silt, mud and debris covered nearly every square inch of the grounds. Most of the turf was dead, drowned under floodwater for weeks. Hildahl also estimates upwards of 1,300 of the club’s signature evergreen trees were killed.
In addition, the clubhouse had been overwhelmed by five feet of floodwater. “It had gone through there pretty quickly and really stirred things up,” Hildahl says. Floors were buckled, furniture was smashed, even the piano was destroyed. “It was pretty obvious that it was a total loss.”
Thoughts turned to rebuilding, but complications arose almost immediately. The area the clubhouse was in was reclassified as a floodplain, meaning no bank would lend money to build there. Moving the clubhouse would necessitate re-routing the entire golf course. The ruined turf would also mean a long, slow grow-in period.
Alternatively, the board of Minot began scouting the area for a new site to rebuild. Hildahl says their search criteria was simple and understandable given what they had all just endured. “We wanted land suitable for a golf course near the city that had a source for water without the threat of being flooded.” They eventually found a site around a small drainage creek miles away from the Souris River.
Officials at Minot put together two options for club members and stockholders to vote on: stay and rebuild at the current site or start over at the new one. The vote was nearly unanimous, with 95 percent voting to move from the flood zone.
The plan to finance the move was multi-faceted. Most of the money was raised by selling the original land to a consortium that had designs on rebuilding the original golf course. Insurance paid the full value of the ruined clubhouse to provide close to $750,000. Minot also took on some debt and offered corporate sponsorships to raise further seed money. A group of members who volunteered to keep paying dues while the transition occurred provided the remaining funds.
“There were about 150 of us that paid from 2012 to 2014,” Hildahl says. Those dues were used as credit in place of initiation fees at the new club. The volunteering members received reciprocal playing privileges at a local club. “We’re looking at also giving them discounted dues at the new club for a few years,” Hildahl adds.
Meanwhile, the leadership at Minot ostensibly looked at the rebuild as a chance to hit the reset button. “We were an 80-year-old club, and all our greens, tee boxes and fairways were built to the specs of that era,” Hildahl explains. The club worked with architect Jim Engh to build a modern, links-style course, with USGA-spec greens and improved agronomy. “We were committed to building a modern course for our members that had the same character as the old club.” A new outdoor pool and enhanced food-and-beverage area were added to the operation as well.
The work was slow. North Dakota’s short growing season meant the grow-in took much longer than anticipated. In fact, construction started in 2012 and continues to this day. But four years after the devastation of the flood, Minot Country Club reopened nine holes in June.
Hildahl estimates Minot lost between 150 to 170 members in the aftermath of the flood. “Some moved away, some joined other clubs in the area, some just moved on from golf,” he notes. The new Minot Country Club boasts just north of 250, with designs on reaching 325. To achieve that goal, the club is offering payment plans, corporate memberships and other creative ways to finance. Most encouraging is the demographic makeup of that membership. “A good number of new members are younger, between 25 and 40,” Hildahl says.
The Souris flood of 2011 devastated Minot and displaced nearly a third of the residents in the town of 45,000. Hildahl says the reopening of Minot Country Club is a much-needed sign that life is slowly returning to normal. “We need a place where you can get together with your friends and family and spend time together, and this is that place.”
Kyle Darbyson is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.