STRICTLY BUSINESS: PRESTWICK GOLF PLANS COMING UP

Some things could start happening soon at Prestwick Plantation.

Final approval of plans for construction of the Prestwick Plantation's 27-hole golf course could come as early as next month.

Plans for the links have been completed by Nicklaus Design. Prestwick's management team will meet with Gary Nicklaus in August.

Prestwick has already cleared and staked 20-foot centers for all golf holes at the proposed site. The Prestwick tract is a 770-acre site with a mile-long access to Bloomfield Road. The development at the Bloomfield site will also include a golf club, condominiums and villas.

Although an exact timetable has not been established, groundbreaking for the golf course could take place in the near future.

"We could be playing on the course by the spring of 2002," said Cord Dombrowski, who heads the development group.

With 27 holes, about 250 acres of land will be used for the course.

The idea for the facility came up about two years ago, said Dombrowski. At that time "we felt we would be looking at two years before starting the project," he said. "We're on schedule."

The new corporation, Presswick Group, was formed, a feasibility study was completed and things started moving.

Prestwick went a step further. It conducted three "focus group" session to collect ideas and data from persons interested in the links and housing along the course.

A lot of notes were taken from the focus meetings and will be included in the final planning. Most people agreed they wanted the excitement of playing a classic course. Other thoughts suggested concept of elevated tees, nice locker rooms, card room, bar and grill, outdoor dining at the clubhouse, electric carts, flat fairway bunkers, caddy program and above average lots for residential areas.

"This will be a classic course," said Dombrowski. "It will be challenging and offer some great scenery with holes climbing uphill, plunging downhill and on slopes."

Although the Presswick Group is currently focusing on the golf course, "we hope to see the real-estate planning and golf course go simultaneously," he said.

Dombrowski is familiar with golf courses and the planning that goes into them. He has been involved in the turf and grass business for more than eight years. The company, Turfgrass American Inc. of Austin, Texas, provides turf grass for large athletic fields and golf courses.

Earthquakes and education

When we talk to Ray Nabors, an entomologist with the UM Delta Research Center at Portageville, it's usually in regard to crop insects, but last week's conversation centered on the new University of Missouri Southern Telecommunications Community Resource Center (TCRC) at the Delta Center.

The new center is being hailed as a major hub in the event of a New Madrid earthquake recurrence, but it's much more, says Nabors, coordinator of the new center.

The new center was established to provide educational and advisory opportunities for citizens in the Southeast Missouri Bootheel, Northeast Arkansas, and surrounding areas. The TCRC uses state-of-the-art technology to provide training for community and area organizations.

"We'll provide computer access and training, degree programs and meeting places for surrounding area," Nabors said. However, "this facility has a different mission as well. We're trying to be prepared for a major disaster that we know is going to happen sometime."

That would be a major earthquake along the New Madrid Fault.

Every Bootheel school child knows about the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquake, an event that made the Mississippi River run backwards and rang church bells in Boston.

To Nabors, another quake is not just possible, it's inevitable.

"This is where the largest earthquake ever recorded in American history took place," he said. "It'll happen again. It's just a matter of time. That's why this was built to be a communications hub in the event of a disaster."

Long before the center officially opened in July, University of Missouri planners coordinated construction plans with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state emergency officials. As a result, Nabors said, "this facility is built to earthquake specs. It's not going to collapse."

Not only would the building withstand an earthquake or just about any other conceivable disaster, so would its links with the outside world. "We have two large generators, so the communications won't fail. We're linked into all the appropriate state and federally agencies hard-wired.

"If the roads are down, we can direct the airlifts and other traffic. Something may break the phone lines, but we'll be able to get out to wherever we need: The Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard or anyone else."

A helicopter pad will soon be built at Delta Center to facilitate the rapid transport of people and cargo.

Nabors, who took his post on June 1, takes seriously the mission of disaster preparedness. But he doesn't spend his days brooding about natural disaster that might not occur in his lifetime.

"There's so much going on," he said. Community and civic groups, service organizations and scientists meet and teleconference in the TCRC meetings rooms, equipped with state-of-the-art computer and telecommunications equipment.

"We have the capability to hold meetings at remote locations, and we use it. But these rooms are also good for face-to-face meetings, and open for use by the public," Nabors said.

There are also seven public access personal computers: "You can walk in right off the street and use them. This gives kids local access to a computer they might never see in their homes."

Southeast Missouri, Nabors noted, is in need of this facility. While it is home to the richest soil in Missouri, some Bootheel counties have average per capita incomes of only about $16,000 and adult illiteracy rates approaching 30 percent.