Most of the things that made Ironwood Country Club a golf course are gone now.
The golf carts and groundskeeping machines were sold at auction. The clubhouse was emptied and used for training operations by firefighters, who cut through the roof with axes.
The once-green, rolling hills are now covered with dirt, as large machines clear the land.
But it’s the last things to go — some 1,000 trees — that really caught the attention of neighbors and passersby at the property near 126th and Pacific Streets.
Developers who bought the 153-acre country club last year plan to create a major mixed-use development, with homes, condominiums, offices, restaurants, shops, a hotel and a tri-faith religious center.
They say they eventually will plant about 3,800 trees, particularly sturdy types that will have a long life span.
But for now, there’s a big empty space where there once were trees — and plenty of questions from people concerned about the changing landscape.
Some neighbors have taken their concerns to City Council members and planning officials. Members of some neighborhood associations have formed a separate group to lobby for the neighbors’ interests.
The project’s developers said they’ve gotten an earful from concerned residents. They say they understand the worries and have seen the same issues arise on other big redevelopment projects, including One Pacific Place and Aksarben Village.
But the objections and concerns won’t derail the project, called Sterling Ridge, developers said.
“I think it’s a reaction to (the loss of) things that have always been there,” said Doug Halvorson, a landscape architect and site planner with Olsson Associates who is working on the new development. “But there’s going to be a lot more of that, because the impetus of the city is to redevelop.”
The course opened as Highland Country Club in 1924 and became Ironwood Country Club in 1999. It closed in 2009 after financial problems and reopened as a public course in 2010.
Lockwood Development purchased the property for $9.98 million at a foreclosure auction in early 2010. In July, the company went public with its plan for the Sterling Ridge development, which is expected to cost between $200 million and $250 million.
Over the last several months, neighbors’ concerns about the project have included the location of new streets, potential traffic problems and light pollution created by the new businesses and additional traffic.
Some neighborhood association leaders reached for comment on the tree removal referred questions to a smaller group formed to address the development. Two of that group’s leaders, Richard Henningsen and Sue Osterholm, declined to comment.
One neighbor in the Leawood Southwest neighborhood, Kellie Wells, said she thinks the developers went too far in removing so many trees. Now, she said, people who live nearby or pass by see only a big empty space — and neighbors put up with additional problems when the wind stirs up the dust.
“I just think it’s a shame,” she said. ‘We’re supposedly supposed to be known around here for Arbor Day, and we cut more trees down than I think they really should. It’s very sad. It looks terrible.”
Another neighbor, Jim Hopkins, said the developers have been upfront with their plans, and he hopes the project ultimately becomes an attractive part of the neighborhood.
Still, he said, it’s a lot of change to handle so quickly.
“You couldn’t have anything better than a golf course in the backyard,” he said.
The trees already have come down and have been dumped in a large pile awaiting removal.
Property owners said the trees were removed after a professional inventory this spring. A five-member team, led by Dave Lanoha of Lanoha Development Co., surveyed the course to determine what kind of trees were on the property and which ones should stay or go.
They found 1,190 trees. More than three-quarters were different soft-wood varieties, including cottonwood, elm and maple. A large number were trees that sprang up on their own, rather than being planted. They were all removed.
An additional 72 trees were types that had to go because of problems with insects and disease: ash, Scotch and Austrian pines. Fifty more were taken out because they were in bad shape, too large to be moved or simply in a bad spot.
About 200 trees, mostly oak, maple and spruce, were left alone or transplanted to another location on the property. Most of them are now near the intersection of Shirley and 126th Streets.
Lanoha said his team took into account each tree’s health, size, variety and location.
He characterized the largest category of trees removed — the cottonwoods, elms and maples — as “trees you wouldn’t want in your yard.”
“We worked very hard to save everything we could save,” Lanoha said.
Eric Berg, a community forestry program leader with the Nebraska Forest Service, said most of the trees that once grew at Ironwood were not what arborists would consider “high value trees,” but he said they did still have value.
He cited a program that calculates the value of different types of trees, based on how they help with stormwater management and absorb carbon dioxide, among other impacts.
A mature cottonwood tree, he said, has a value of about $350. By contrast, a small tree’s value is about $10 per year. It gains value as it grows.
On average, the trees planted in the Sterling Ridge development will be about three inches in circumference and about 12 feet tall.
While it will be years before those trees reach their full size and value, Berg said the developers’ plans to put in a wider variety of trees makes sense.
“We’ve put too many eggs in the basket of soft maples and ash trees, and when disease and invasive insects come in, they take out all of those species,” he said.
A recent survey of Omaha’s trees found that there are more than 3.9 million in the city, with a total estimated worth of $2.5 billion. Some 360,000 of those are ash trees, at risk from a disease expected to get here within the next two to three years.
Most of Sterling Ridge will be bare for the near future.
Chip James, the owner of Lockwood Development, said new trees will start going in once the first phase of the development begins, likely next spring.
That stage of the process will involve 46 homes and about 1,000 trees. The entire project will likely take an additional five to 10 years to complete.
So far, at least some of the neighbors don’t seem mollified by the plans, but James said he expects many will change their opinion over time.
“We’ve got to use the land responsibly,” he said.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1543, erin.golden@owh.com
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