New Harbour Town clubhouse finished with time to spare

HILTON HEAD, S.C. -- Every 50 years or so, Hilton Head Island pulls off a miracle in Harbour Town.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday at the new $23 million Harbour Town Clubhouse revives the miracle of 1969.

That's when the first clubhouse was finished. It was a rather lonely building in the woods. A new marina with candy-striped lighthouse were just beginning to emerge from the marsh nearby.

They say the clubhouse paint had not yet dried as professional golfers began teeing it up, and Harbour Town Golf Links designer Pete Dye was still grooming one of his devilish sand traps.

This time, the miracle is re-investment. And the new clubhouse opens with weeks to spare before the touring golfers return April 13 for the 47th playing of the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing.

"We feel that we have much more than just a golf clubhouse," said Sea Pines Resort president Steve Birdwell. "We hope it is an iconic destination for the visitors and residents of Hilton Head Island for generations to come."

Brothers Charles and Joe Fraser, who developed Sea Pines and got the tournament rolling, did not live to see the new vote of confidence from their successors, William H. "Bill" Goodwin Jr. and Alice T. Goodwin of Richmond, Va., and their children.

The Goodwins have now rebuilt the Plantation Club and the Beach Club. They have reinvested all of the resort's cash flow and much more into the bold idea of Sea Pines.

Perhaps no one represents the miracle of 2015 better than John Cottis, the project superintendent for Choate Construction Co., based in Atlanta.

"We did not have a Plan B," Cottis said of his job to cram a 16-month project into 10 months between tournaments. "The glass is never anything but full. Not half-full. Full. That's the way we all saw it."

'Breathed it'

A lot of things were working against the contractor.

Time was the main thing. Demolition on the old clubhouse began May 9, 2014. The new one was finished March 6, 2015.

They put a three-story, 55,000-square-foot building on the site of the old one of about 30,000-square feet. And it had to mesh perfectly with an existing adjacent building, the Harbour Town Conference Center.

Workers put in 60-hour weeks, working six days a week and sometimes seven. The site was abuzz with 125 to 160 workers per day. They had to be shuttled to the work site, which is surrounded by residences and a golf course that never closed. The contractor had to lease land off-site from the Town of Hilton Head Island for materials storage.

The job involved 38 subcontractors and vendors, said Cottis. Only five workers were Choate employees.

Cottis greets workers by name. He gives tours. He reflects on his childhood when he wanted to be a club pro, and when his dad brought him from Savannah to Heritage tournaments at Harbour Town.

He thinks about his roots in the carpentry trade -- which he preferred over college -- helping build homes on a booming Hilton Head.

He mentions his other local jobs in 15 years with Choate -- heading the new renovation of the Long Cove Club's clubhouse on Hilton Head, the Dataw Island Clubhouse near Beaufort, and the cottages at The Cloisters on Sea Island.

And he says none of it compares to being a part of the Harbour Town Clubhouse.

"We lived it," he said. "We breathed it. We ate it. It was our life for almost a year."

When the certificate of occupancy was delivered, a great burden was lifted.

And he cried.

Hands of time

Architect Grady L. Woods of Ridgeland started working on concepts for the new clubhouse in 2009.

Then Sea Pines decided to step back and look at the dire needs for refurbishment all over the resort, and look at it holistically. Other projects took precedent, but in late 2013 Woods began in earnest to design the new clubhouse.

"We look at this building as if it's a civic building, not a private club," he said. "It has a prominence in the community, as would a courthouse."

The owners, architect and interior designer Karen Kent of Atlanta wanted something traditional, yet airy and open with long views. They wanted to salute the past with the Hall of Champions, lined with tournament memorabilia and oil paintings by Coby Whitmore and West Fraser of the Heritage champions.

They wanted a crisp salute to today, with a 2,400-square-foot pro locker room upstairs with reclaimed white oak beams, a custom steam room, a grill, sitting room, balcony overlooking the 9th hole and first teebox, and restroom floor made of Italian marble and custom mosaic inlays.

They wanted the traditional feel of a fine home, with its centerpiece a "grand stair" with white oak handrails custom made on site.

They wanted gathering spaces, including a junior ballroom upstairs. They greatly expanded the pro shop, and included the 2,000-square-foot Links restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating.

Featured prominently on the exterior are two large clocks. It's a doff of the cap to the clock at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland, Woods said. And it is practical, like the copper weather vane on the slate roof above the clocks.

The hands of time are all over the new clubhouse.

As a boy, Woods had a summer job at the Harbour Town golf course, raking traps and pulling crows feet from greens.

Millard Choate, who founded what is today one of the largest general contractors in the Southeast in his basement in 1989, also worked in construction on Hilton Head in the 1970s.

The clock could also mark the cadence of a feeling and a dream that the clubhouse has represented since the miracle of 1969.

The architect said: "We hope it sets an example of how you can look at the past and the future at the same time."

This article was written by David Lauderdale from The Island Packet Online and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.