Review & Representation
Peer Review, Expert Witness and Hearings
Independent peer reviews of other architects' plans, expert witness testimony, zoning board hearings and presentations to clubs and municipalities.
Chapter 01
Peer review: a second read before ground is broken
Peer Reviews of ASGCA and Celebrity Golf Course Designers Plans is one of the services this studio offers, and it exists for a specific moment: before a club or an owner commits real money to construction, a second architect looks at the plan with fresh eyes. That review checks routing logic, drainage, buildability and cost risk against what is actually on the ground, not just what reads well on a rendering.
The plans under review come from ASGCA members and from celebrity golf course designers, the kind of names a board or an ownership group is often reluctant to question on its own. An independent peer review gives that group a second, qualified opinion before the first shovel of dirt moves, which is exactly when a correction is cheapest to make.
A golf course architect walking a dune ridge on site with a rolled plan.
Expert witness testimony and zoning board hearings
Expert Witness Testimony & Zoning Board Hearings sits alongside peer review as a related service: presenting the same kind of technical judgment, routing, grading, drainage, buildability, in a setting where a municipal board or a hearing needs it explained in plain terms rather than in architect shorthand.
Normandie Golf Club is the kind of site condition this work is built around. Mellett Golf Course Design is working with a home builder there to carefully lay out an 18-hole golf course among steep slopes and restrictive municipal zoning ordinances, with construction pending. Steep terrain and a restrictive zoning ordinance are exactly the combination that puts routing, grading and stormwater decisions in front of a board, and it is the same technical case a peer review or an expert witness engagement has to make clearly and defensibly.
Chapter 03
Presenting a plan to people who are not architects
Municipal, Public, Club Presentations round out this group of services. A routing plan or a master plan that makes complete sense to another golf course architect still has to be explained to a club membership voting on an assessment, a city council weighing a public course budget, or a planning board reading a site plan for the first time.
John Mellett presents that work in person, translating grading sheets and routing logic into what a hole will look like, how it will play and what it costs to maintain, out of the studio at 1545 West Ridge Road in Salisbury, North Carolina. Call 704.877.5600 to talk through a presentation, a peer review or a hearing before it is scheduled.
Peer reviews, testimony and presentations from Mellett Golf Course Design, Salisbury, North Carolina. Call 704.877.5600.