GARDEN GROVE : Former Landfill Fills In for Golf

Officials built a baseball field on a landfill here two decades ago, but the unstable ground kept shifting, so much that eventually the batters could barely see the brim of the left fielder’s cap and the trip from home to first was an uphill climb.

Now the city and developer Rick Hanson think they have found a better use for the site: a $1.5-million golf practice center that opened this month, complete with a driving range, sand bunkers, putting greens, a pro shop and professional instructors.

If the greens should become a bit uneven, Hanson said, he isn’t worried. “The golf ball doesn’t care,” he said. “If the ground does settle, we’ll just fill it in with dirt.”

The 10-acre landfill was originally a 60-foot-deep rock and gravel quarry. The property was purchased in 1946 by the Garden Grove Sanitary District to deposit cans and bottles.

Orange County residents at that time generally burned the rest of their household trash.

Trash burning was banned in the late 1950s, said Ron Cates, general manager of the sanitary district, but Orange County needed landfill space, so Garden Grove leased the site to the county in 1957.

The pit was filled in only three years, Cates said.

After the baseball field proved too difficult to maintain, the area sat idle, and several deep hollows formed.

But in 1993 the site got an unexpected gift when a flood control company dredging the Santa Ana River needed to dispose of about 15,000 cubic yards of clay and loam.

The sanitary district got the soil for free and used it to level and stabilize the area. If the city had paid for the project, Cates said, it would have spent $1 million.

The district signed a 20-year lease with Hanson under which the developer will pay about $4,000 a month to the sanitary district, Cates said.

The facility, Duffers Practice Center, at 12261 Chapman Ave. near Harbor Boulevard, is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Baskets of golf balls cost $4.50 and $6.