South Dallas is getting a golf course, and it'll be here before you can say Rudy's Chicken. If you get that joke, you were one of the people packed into the May 15 Dallas City Council briefing.
Ever since Mayor Mike Rawlings announced his Grow South initiative, city officials have been hard at work dreaming up economic development for the southern sector.
The Trinity Forest Golf Course is perhaps the most ambitious idea to funnel dollars and jobs to South Dallas, but council member Dwaine Caraway wanted to make sure Rudy's Chicken got its due praise as well.
The city unanimously agreed to a 40-year contract with AT&T for the construction, maintenance and naming rights of the Trinity Forest Golf Course.
Caraway has pledged $3.4 million of his discretionary fund to bolster the new Rudy's and other Lancaster Corridor developments.
"People line up in the rain, the cold and the snow. I don't know what it is about that chicken, but people really love it," Caraway said.
Meanwhile, back on the golf course. The city unanimously agreed to a 40-year contract with AT&T for the funding, construction, maintenance and naming rights of the Trinity Forest Golf Course.
It also signed a 40-year lease with Trinity Forest Golfers for the site's management and operation.
The championship golf course will also be home to SMU's golf program and a new nonprofit called First Tee, which will introduce the game to inner city youth.
"This has been put together at warp speed," said council member Vonciel Hill Jones. "Many people have been involved, but the star is city manager Mary Suhm."
Jerry Allen and Mike Rawlings joined in on the glad-handing of Suhm, who's had a bit of a rough patch lately.
"There are always going to be chicken littles of the world, but you go right through them," Allen said.
Of course, there's still this matter of $20 million to fund the project. The money's due August 31.
"We have every expectation that it will come," said Trinity Forest Golfers spokesperson Carol Reed. "We would not have agreed to that date if we didn't feel it was possible."
She declined to elaborate further on funding prospects but estimated construction would begin by the end of 2013, with a completion slated for 2017. The Byron Nelson golf tournament will hit the course in 2019, per a new agreement with the PGA.
The Byron Nelson (which kicks off its 30th tournament May 18) has a contract with the Four Seasons Resort & Club at Las Colinas until 2018.
Four Seasons in Las Colinas will lose the Byron Nelson golf tournament to South Dallas in 2019.
