Pro shop roof, trees main casualties at Riverlands, Belle Terre

country clubs

By KEVIN CHIRI

Publisher

LAPLACE – The Hurricane Katrina report from the two LaPlace golf courses could be considered good or bad, depending on your perspective.

Both Riverlands Country Club and Belle Terre Country Club surrived the storm, albeit with some damage to their clubhouse and restaurant facilities.

However both courses lost a tremendous number of trees on their courses, which could be construed differently depending on your perspective.

There may actually be some golfers who are happy to have some of those pesky trees out of the way, since they obviously were the only reason their scores never got quite as low as they would have liked.

But the good news from Riverlands and Belle Terre is that both courses are up and running, even though repairs are underway to building facilities at both places.

Riverlands suffered the worst damage, with the entire roof blown off their pro shop. Repairs are already underway, and a makeshift pro shop has now been set up inside the main banquet and restaurant facility. Other minor roof damage occurred to some other buildings.

“We also had the roof peeled back on our pool house and some small buildings, but the main damage was the pro shop. We are completely rebuilding that facility,” Club President Gordon Jeffcoat said.

Jeffcoat said Riverlands was under water throughout the course for three days, but now has all 18 holes open and available for play.

“We also lost all the food out of our freezer, but thanks to a lot of good volunteer help from our members, we are back up and running,” he added.

Belle Terre also can report that the club is fully functional, however some serious damage to the roof on part of their restaurant has reduced the amount of space available for use.

“We are only using about 50 percent of our restaurant now, but we are open,” General Manager Tim Duhe said. “But we hope to have everything back to normal by Oct. 1.”

Both clubs are still trying to contact or get calls from all their members to be sure everyone survived the storm alright.