PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – There are no golf balls in the air for the PGA Tour for the time being, but there’s plenty of dust and noise in the air along County Road 210 as the construction of the Tour’s 187,000-square foot “Global Home” continues on schedule.
Workers for Clark Construction and other subcontractors were hard at it on Wednesday, both on the shell of the $65 million dollar building that will serve as the new headquarters for the Tour and more than 800 employees, and on projects such as the man-made lake that will surround the building.
“Construction on the Global Home of the PGA Tour continues as scheduled,” said Kirsten Sabia, the Tour’s vice president for Integrated Communications in an emailed statement.
The workers at the site are taking the usual precautions laid down by health authorities during the current coronavirus crisis. Most of the work is being done outside.
“We are proceeding under the direction of local authorities, working within the confines of construction as allowed,” Sabia said. “Clark Construction is also taking all precautions to adhere to social distancing regulations.”
During his state of the PGA Tour news conference on March 10, Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said the building was on target for a move-in by Jan. 1. Sabia built some leeway into that timetable in her statement, understandable given how fast developments regarding the virus have moved since Monahan had to cancel the Players Championship three days after his news conference.
“We have no indication of substantial delays at this time, and are still hopeful for a Q1 move-in,” she said.
The Tour has since canceled eight other tournaments, and the next event scheduled is the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, on May 21-24.
When former commissioner Deane Beman moved the headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Ponte Vedra Beach in 1976, he had around a dozen employees and operated out of a rental condo. After TPC Sawgrass was built in 1980, the Tour staff had grown to 100 and occupied 24,000 square feet in the two buildings within sight of the first hole on the Players Stadium Course.
The Tour staff has grown by eight-fold since and has its employees spread out among the two main headquarter buildings and 17 other satellite offices.
When it moves into the Global Home, the Tour has pledged to add 300 new jobs over a 10-year period, part of the deal to receive around $3 million in economic incentives from St. Johns County.
