By Josh Doxtator – Thornberry Creek at Oneida General Manager
We’re only a little over a year away from the inaugural Oneida LPGA Classic taking place at your own Thornberry Creek at Oneida! We’ve had some major movement as we prepare to accommodate and set the stage for the world’s best lady professionals to compete and showcase our product and heritage to the world. We hope to keep you informed of the transformations as they happen and through publications like the Kalihwisaks we can keep you up to date on a monthly basis.
On the business side we’re finalizing our agreement with IMG as the event management group in charge of operations and execution. Working closely with IMG we’re confident that the Oneida culture will be represented properly and the look and feel of the event will positively represent our people. IMG will handle all necessary tournament functions including volunteers; we should have a website in the next couple months that speaks to all the opportunities at the event!
If you happen to venture to Thornberry this month, you’ll see a lot of activity as we start the necessary renovations. Working with OTIE you’ll see the removal of the two home sites in front of the property; we’re happy to announce that all trees removed from the sites will go to assist our Elders with firewood. Once we construct an additional entrance into the facility we will break ground on the new practice facility. The expected close date should be in early June for the existing practice tee and an expected completion date in early fall.
The new practice tee will feature 36,000 square feet of teeing space with permanent artificial turf tee areas for use during the shoulder season. The space will also allow the opportunity to host outdoor functions such as ceremonies or other specific club functions. In addition to the teeing ground there will be a 10,000 square foot putting green and short game area to assist you in becoming the best player you can be! This space will be unlike any other in the region and we look forward to building brand new player development campaigns around the new practice facility.
The parking lot will expand to the west side of the property as we will be losing some existing parking. Once complete we will have over 150 new parking spots and a grand entry into the grounds that’s worthy of its beauty. Our focus is to keep the natural beauty and its surroundings in place while incorporating functional concepts through entertainment and being able to support heavy traffic.
Our hope is to have the new practice tee in place and seeded by August later this summer. The practice tee will not open until 2017 and depending on the health of the tee may not open until later in the spring or early summer.
We cannot thank you enough for your support and making this a reality; we’re extremely confident that these changes will assist in showcasing Oneida to the world! Please stop by and see the improvements throughout the summer.
