Project Profile
Royal Greens Golf Club at King Abdullah Economic City
Some clients want us to build a golf course because they want to develop a golf course. Some clients want us to build a golf course because they want to develop a resort. Some have even grander plans than that. Few have ambitions as large as our client at King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) in Saudi Arabia. On the shore of the Red Sea 100km north of Jeddah, they are developing a city, with all of the infrastructure one would expect: residential, commercial, retail, healthcare, education, infrastructure services, hospitality, leisure and so on, alongside one of the largest ports in the world. The scale of the project is quite staggering: as an example, the port can handle up to 20 million TEU per year - for those of us not familiar with TEU, that’s the equivalent of about 340 million tonnes…or enough containers to cover an area of over 51,000 football pitches!
Anyway, back to our project: we started design work on The Royal Greens Golf & Country Club at KAEC in 2007. The brief was to create an enjoyable resort course, styled as an oasis in the desert, utilising water to enhance views from the surrounding real estate. Early on, we decided to use sea water in all the lakes to ensure that no fresh water was lost due to evaporation. This, and the total ban on the importation of live sprigs into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led us to the choice of Pure Dynasty Paspalum.
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