Big Plan on Campus

Occupying 250 acres along the border of Denver and Aurora, CommonGround Golf Course seamlessly blends a striking dichotomy.

On the one hand, its exquisitely challenging, eminently walkable layout of 5,543 to 7,229 yards regularly serves as the site of state championships and USGA qualifiers. The par-71 course has also ably acquitted itself at 7,378 and 7,470 yards for the stroke-play portions of the 2012 U.S. Amateur and 2019 U.S. Mid-Am Championships.

On the other hand, it’s an incubator for new golfers and an enjoyable test for recreational players. CommonGround sports a nine-hole par-3 course for juniors, a community putting green, and offers robust group and individual instruction options for every age and level. The innovative Solich Caddie and Leadership Academy, which has produced dozens of Evans Scholars and been replicated at courses around the state, started at CommonGround in 2012.

To fuse a pair of the course’s clever taglines: CommonGround is “a place for all and all the game teaches, located at the intersection of mission and masterpiece.”

CommonGround opened in 2009, the result of 10-year plan of the Colorado Golf Association and Colorado Women’s Golf Association (which would merge with the CGA in 2018) to establish a course that would be, as CGA Executive Director Ed Mate said, “the best example of a state golf association course.”

It immediately became just that, with Tom Doak’s Renaissance Golf team transforming the old Lowry AFB’s lackluster Mira Vista (née Westerly View) Golf Course into a layout with ample fairways and greens of varying sizes, shapes, slopes and surrounds. More than 50 bunkers dictate strategy, as does the water on holes 6, 11, 12. The five holes heading home provide one of the most memorable stretches on the Front Range.

What lacks memorability, however, is CommonGround’s small and operationally inefficient clubhouse. Which is why construction workers, not golfers, now populate it, and golfers now check in at a double-wide west of the cart-staging areas.

By the time September rolls into October, these same players will find themselves returning to a completely renovated building, which will have expanded from 2,200 to 3,100 square feet.

The renovation represents the first step in creating a CGA campus at CommonGround. Following the renderings of Roth Sheppard Architects, Saunders Construction will, according to board member and architect Brian Kipp, “deliver significant improvements to the customer experience and operational efficiency. It’s really a nice facelift.”

Inside the clubhouse, Kipp explains, “we’re going strip the inside of all finishes, making it all new in terms of millwork, merchandising cabinets and lighting.” Added square footage for retail merchandising will be to your left as you enter a foyer from the west entrance.

The space behind the counter will no longer serve as the staff workroom and merchandise storage area, and Head PGA Professional Ben Pennymon will no longer work in a small room behind that space. He and staff will move to a new office and a new workroom on the east side of the building, reconfiguring the golf shop to provide more room for guests.

When those guests get hungry, thirsty or chatty,

Player’s Corner State of Play

they can repair to new furnishings in both the dining area and on the patio.

Exterior changes include finishes. “We’re going to strip the skin from whole exterior and put in brick veneer, new siding and wood soffits,” Kipp shares. “We’re replacing the asphalt roof with a metal one. This way, when and if the other buildings go in, they can all have the same style.”

In addition to a possible CGA headquarters on First Avenue, campus structures could include a new maintenance facility on the northwest side of the property (relocating it from the remote east side) and the repurposing of the cart barn, with cart storage moved to an excavated area beneath the tournament pavilion.

“Yes, we wanted to develop a campus plan, but our committee also looked at how the golf course served the community and how the clubhouse remodeling would improve the overall golfer’s experience,” building committee chair Ty Holt shares. “The corner of First and Havana is a very important piece of ground.” commongroundgc.com; 303-340-1520