“We had to over-excavate and pull soil out and found a whole bunch of rock down there,” Clifford said. “We had 36 truckloads of extra rock. That made the grating efforts stop for a little while. It doesn’t help that we’re excavating at the worst time of year.”
More than two inches of rain in February forced crews to halt construction by two weeks, he said.
The bedrock’s thickness can be traced back to the club’s origins in the 1950s, when De Bell was carved out of the hillside, said Councilman Gary Bric, who sits on the clubhouse subcommittee and lives feet from the links.
“That thing was dug out of an entire mountain,” he said. “But I’m not worried about the delay. They are ready to go now.”
The project is now set to be completed by December, said Deputy Director for Park Services Jan Bartolo.
“The utilities are all done,” she said. “This is the very beginning of the infrastructure.”
The clubhouse won’t be the only new addition to De Bell. Officials with the Greens Committee that oversees operations at the golf course are mulling a name change for the Burbank institution from De Bell Municipal Golf Course to De Bell Golf Club, Golf Director Scott Scozzola said.
“With our name now, there is no country club connotation,” he said. “We would re-brand ourselves. It would be an upgrade.”
The new name would have to be approved by city officials, as De Bell is a publicly financed operation, said Bric, who doubted the name change would have much effect.
