Merion Plans "Green" Operations Center

Merion Golf Club has construction under way to replace their existing maintenance facility with a new, sustainable Operations and Turf Maintenance Center. The 24,000 sq.ft Center will serve two golf courses including the historic East Course and will feature a 12,000 sq.ft. green roof, water recycling systems, and a waste oil fired boiler for heating.

The new center is planned for a small site north of the existing Clubhouse and will be a complex of single story buildings planned around a service courtyard. One building will house offices and support spaces for the Director of Golf Operations and his staff, a dormitory for Merion's world famous intern training program, meeting space, food service, and locker rooms for the grounds crews and a state of the art equipment maintenance shop. A second building will serve as storage for maintenance equipment and specialized storage, mixing, and equipment space for chemical and fertilizer handling.

The operations and maintenance shop building will parallel the 18th fairway of the East Course but will be virtually invisible under a "green roof" that will appear as an extension of the fescue grassed rough. Other "green" features include a closed system for recycling of water used for cleaning equipment and a closed mixing and recapture system protecting the Fertilizer and Chemical Building that ensures total capture and containment of any spill and zero discharge into the environment. The energy source for the radiantly heated Maintenance Shop is a duel fired boiler that will reuse waste oil from both the maintenance equipment as well as waste cooking oil from the Clubhouse kitchen. The air conditioning for the operations, office, crew and dormitory space will feature a high efficiency system with occupant sensitive controls. The complex could prove to be the most sustainable and green facility of its kind in the world.

The complex is being planned and designed by J. Robertson Cox, Architect for the Master's Studio of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in association with Blackney Hayes Architects of Philadelphia. Mr. Cox is also the designer of the recently completed Halfway House for Merion's East Course, site of this year's Walker Cup Matches and the United States Open in 2013. Merion has selected Ehret Construction Company of Wilmington, Delaware as general contractor for the project which began construction after the 2009 Walker Cup matches.