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Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club in Menlo Park has made the back nine of a golf-course renovation effort launched a year ago, but it’s looking to do more down the line.
On Monday, Feb. 5, the 450-member club at 2900 Sand Hill Road got the go-ahead from the city Planning Commission to construct a new two-story, approximately 15,000-square-foot building to serve as a maintenance and operations center — just part of a long-range master plan involving other improvement projects.
The building project is expected to start in the summer or fall and marks the final leg of a campaign begun early 2023 to upgrade the golf course, club General Manager Aaron Grant said. The building project will take about a year to finish, according to the club.
“Sharon Heights is delighted to have received approval for the operations-center project,” Grant said in an email to The Almanac. The project “will house our maintenance team in a vastly improved structure from the 1962-built maintenance facility they have been in as well as some administrative staff.”
The project will also add a 46-space parking lot and remove 19 trees that are in poor condition, a city staff report said. Though not required because of previous mitigation measures and tree replanting related to other improvements, the club still plans to put in a variety of new landscaping and a southern live oak tree.
In addition, the report said, the club has proposed installing landscape hedges to help address a neighbor’s concern about privacy and screening issues.
During the commission meeting, Vice Chair Jennifer Schindler praised the club’s environmental conscientiousness.
“I am certainly supportive of what’s been proposed here and appreciate the ongoing commitment to making sure that the tree-mitigation requirements are not only fulfilled but exceeded,” Schindler said.
The commission voted 7-0 to grant the club use and architectural-control permits to proceed with its building project.
This project is just one component of a master-planning process that the club embarked on in 2010 to improve its long-term sustainability.
The club’s membership has approved and funded the master plan’s projects, which also include solar-power installation and a $23 million state-of-the-art recycled-water plant completed in 2019 in partnership with the West Bay Sanitary District.
Grant declined to say how much the club is spending on any project. “But I can say that we have invested significantly into the recycled-water facility that limited our use of potable water and the reconstruction of our golf course, which also saw a significant investment in native species of trees and plants being placed on our property,” he said.
The club will continue to explore future improvement projects, he said.
“With the nature of our business and hospitality,” Grant said, “we will continually be looking at how we best utilize our property for many purposes inclusive of the enjoyment and utilization of our membership, the enhancement of workplace environment for our teams and the stewardship of our land for our community.”
Why is this newsworthy? Good for the 450 ultra wealthy members. Waste of ink for the other 700,000 people in the area.
Not hating. Cool project. No issue with golf. This story is just irrelevant.
With the current housing “crisis” and given the size of Menlo Park I believe we should not even have a golf course. When checking the property taxes paid by the country club looks to be paying a couple thousand dollars for private use green spaces of 450 people. With the proposed housing element, the additional housing areas laid out just adds to the already densest and most congested neighborhoods and not evenly distributed throughout Menlo Park. Furthermore, the housing element I think should be an opportunity to balance green spaces, density, city services, and transportation congestion through out Menlo Park with a focus on neighborhoods disproportionately impacted.