From Deseret News archives:
Sand Hollow is latest Hurricane golf dream
Folks around here have heard all kinds of talk of more exotic golf courses, condos, big residential developments, parks and highways for years. But this time, on the heels of burgeoning growth in St. George, perhaps the fuse is finally lit.
City officials predict 60,000 people and six new golf courses will dot the landscape the next 20 years.
A few days ago, at a ground-breaking for Sand Hollow Resort, a development adjacent to Sand Hollow State Park and BLM sand dunes, you got the feeling earth would really move this time. Actually, it did.
About five years ago, I attended similar ceremonies not too far from this spot. The occasion was a press event for Outlaw Ridge, a proposed golf course somehow linked to the names of Johnny Miller and Steve Young. They did a great marketing plan because whenever you talk to people of a new golf course in Hurricane, the name Outlaw Ridge surfaces.
Outlaw Ridge remains somebody's dream.
Said Thomas Seneca, president of Sand Hollow Resort, "The difference between this and Outlaw Ridge is that this is actually going to be built."
Tom Hirschi, Hurricane mayor, is a believer. He's watched myriad groups come and go, and now he's seen a partnership forged by the Washington County Water Conservancy District, the state's institutional trust lands, the BLM, Hurricane City, Dixie regional power and even realignment of the proposed four-lane Southern Corridor highway in recent months, all to get Sand Hollow up and running.
Hirschi is a southern Utah mayor right out of central casting, a good ol' boy.
"Who'da thunk it?" Hirschi asked a group of a hundred gathered for ceremonies this past week.
"I can remember back in high school, going out chasing jack rabbits out here and you couldn't give this land away, even if all you had to do is pay back taxes. Now look at this," said Hirschi.
What he referred to is the proposed 27-hole golf course designed by former BYU All-American John Fought, who is fast becoming one of the country's most popular course designers.
Fought's course will wind its way around 900 acres of a resort that will include a water park, condos, houses, a hotel, a horse trail, tennis facility — all a stone's throw from Utah's mini Lake Powell — Sand Hollow State Park, one of the only places in Utah I know of where you can pull a boat, a camping trailer and four-wheelers used in attacking sand dunes right to the water's edge.
Fought, decked out in his construction garb, said the piece of property that lines the cliffs of the Virgin River and 35,000 acres of BLM land is one of the most spectacular properties he's seen. "I'm tickled to death to work on this," he said.
