Rebuilt Scholl Canyon Course Has the Smell of a Winner : Golf: Landfill under original layout was a health hazard. New course draws praise.

Scholl Canyon Golf Course was dying. The body was decaying and it was hardly a secret.

Not long ago, golfers could smell Scholl Canyon before they reached the facility’s parking lot. The stench from the course, built on a landfill site in the foothills overlooking Los Angeles, was almost indescribable.

Eyes watered. Nasal passages burned.

“The air was so rank, so foul, so thick, that you had to use an extra club to reach the green,” said Kelly Magee of Montrose.

After four years in mothballs and a $4-million face lift, Scholl Canyon re-opened in November. Replete with state-of-the-art technology to handle the decomposition problem, Scholl’s makeover is startling to golfers like Magee, who played the old course way back when.

“(Old Scholl) was flat and boring,” said Magee, who has played the new layout a half-dozen times. “It didn’t have any trees. It was uninteresting.”

The new version definitely has its entertainment value, particularly on the back nine, which includes a 20-acre mountain-top parcel that was annexed when the layout was expanded to 18 holes.

Any way you slice it, any course is good news around Glendale, if not elsewhere. In fact, Scholl is the first course to open in the Valley region since Camarillo’s private Spanish Hills Country Club was unveiled in June 1992.

Of course, there’s an asterisk attached to the former. Scholl, the sequel, technically isn’t new--the old course is down there somewhere.

Scholl I was a 40-acre, nine-hole course built on a city dump. Like a field of fruit gone rotten, it was plowed under. Now this, from fallow to fertile, in all of a year.

Twelve months ago, the City of Glendale signed a developmental agreement with the American Golf Corp., which agreed to rebuild the site in exchange for a 40-year operational lease.

Sound like a great deal? There was considerable work to be done. After all, it isn’t every day that a course is condemned.

The place has always had potential. The views from Scholl are spectacular and on a clear day golfers can see Santa Catalina Island, the Griffith Park Observatory and the L.A. skyline.

But at old Scholl, clear days--not to mention every other day--were hazardous to your health. In 1990, four years after the facility first opened its doors, the Air Quality Management District shut down Scholl because of methane gas leakage.

Methane, caused by the decomposition of the landfill matter, is a nearly odorless, colorless gas of high flammability.

The end result was that John Q. Public Links was left high and dry in Glendale for years. The community’s other courses, Chevy Chase and Oakmont country clubs, are private and pricey.

Not surprisingly, interest in the resuscitation project was high, said Brian Bode, the head pro at Scholl Canyon. Despite four years in limbo, the Scholl Canyon men’s and women’s clubs never folded. On Nov. 13, reopening day, 300 golfers showed up to play, Bode said.

Players found that the course had been completely overhauled. Scholl II is an 18-hole, 60-acre executive course with a par of 60. It also features a 34-stall, lighted driving range. While it has its quirks, Scholl has an understated charm that should attract plenty of beginners and intermediate players.

Scholl didn’t exactly break new ground, if you will. The phenomenon of erecting golf courses on landfills is fast becoming commonplace. In California, where urban land is increasingly rare and expensive, cities can save a fortune by recycling acreage they already own.

“There seems to be a definite trend,” Bode said. “Places don’t always have a lot of better options.”

Other Southland courses built on landfill sites include Industry Hills Sheraton Resort in the City of Industry, MountainGate Country Club at the crest of the Sepulveda Pass and River Ridge Golf Course in Oxnard.

Industry Hills, which is 15 years old, is the Southland’s biggest landfill success story. The public facility has two top-flight 18-hole courses, plus tennis and equestrian facilities spread over 750 acres. Methane is used to heat and cool its buildings. Effluent irrigates the course.

The stench and methane leakage weren’t the only dilemma at Scholl I. Numerous structural defects developed. Subsidence was a problem on the greens. Fissures and sinkholes appeared in many places, not to mention the occasional flash fire.

“We’d have fissures open and somebody would flip a lighted cigarette in it and a little fire would break out,” said Bob Mezak, who supervised the project for the Glendale Parks, Recreation and Community Services Dept.

There have been no such problems at Scholl II, Mezak said. And they’ve actively sought them out. The AQMD requires the course to take daily methane readings with a portable probe.

The makeover wasn’t limited to above-ground features. The city installed a pipeline system to collect the methane, which is channeled to the Grayson Power Plant and used to generate electricity for Glendale. Water used at Scholl is recycled.

Advances in methane collection should all but eliminate the possibility of future shutdowns, Mezak said. As insurance, layers of plastic have been placed beneath Scholl’s greens to ensure that nobody spontaneously combusts.

Reconstruction began last November. More than 300,000 cubic yards of dirt were redistributed. After the methane pipelines were installed, the old course was covered with another six to 10 feet of topsoil. In several areas, a layer of clay was added below the topsoil to help seal the landfill. Some of the dirt came from Metrolink tunneling projects.

By next summer, the place should be bustling and in full bloom, Mezak said.

The bent grass greens and Bermuda fairways will have matured. By then, an elevator will be available to help golfers with the daunting hike to the 12th tee, situated atop a crest. The snack bar will have its beer license. New electric carts, with centrifugal clutches, will have arrived “to prevent freewheeling down the hills,” Mezak said.

Can’t have players careening off the cliffs. Yet if feedback can be measured in terms of turnout, Scholl is a runaway winner. Bode said play has steadily increased, despite the onset of winter.

“It’s really been surprising,” Bode said. “They never forgot (we were here).”