Dear Readers,

Last Sunday, I took a lovely walk along the hills and valleys of the Boothbay Harbor Country Club.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so, you must have noticed lots of construction activity at the old golf course.

A couple of weeks ago, after a year of furious activity, they finished the final renovations on the front nine holes and invited the club members and the general public to come and inspect their work.

After playing the course several times, most of the time on foot, I finally feel qualified, as a golfer for nearly 60 years, to submit an opinion on the renovation.

I believe Paul G. Coulombe, the new owner of the Boothbay Harbor Country Club, has gotten good value for the millions he has spent on the old course.

In just a year or so, he and his architect, Bruce Hepner, transformed a quirky little woods course into a visual wonder.

If you don't believe me, just ask your golfing friends and neighbors.

Best of all, they built a Maine golf course. As you walk the pristine fairways, you know you are not playing a huge wide open track in Florida, Ohio or California.

They exposed massive granite ledges to provide craggy frames for the playing surfaces by filling and sculpturing fairways.

They raised and lengthened some tees to challenge the longest hitters, planted trees to grab errant shots and planted hundreds of shrubs and tons of beach roses to pepper the woods with flowers. They built some huge rolling greens designed to penalize less than precise shots and blasted away a hillside to create a practice facility.

In short, Coulombe & Co. enhanced and renovated the course while serving up a visual treat that is a joy to play for golfers of all ages, genders and skill levels.

As fall approaches, the club will close and Boothbay's Knickerbocker Group will begin to construct the new clubhouse. The plans for the structure and its landscaping will be a major change for our towns.

Once it is finished, the country club may become a major new attraction for visitors on par with the wonderful Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. It might attract more visitors who will spend more vacation dollars with local merchants who hire our friends and neighbors.

Last year, in an interview with the Boothbay Register/Wiscasset Newspaper, Coulombe, who retired here after earning a fortune in the spirits business, explained he was spending some of his capital because he wanted to see our community grow.

“The harbor is so pretty and I want to help create a better year-round economy for people here,” he said. “I have the time, and the wherewithal to make a difference. Maybe other people will see it (and) decide it would be a good place to invest their dollars.”

Some will complain of the changes, others will embrace them. It is always thus, as we live in a community where some object to anything that was not in place on the day they first moved to town.

Paul Coulombe certainly has changed the old golf course. But he changed it while respecting its nature by enhancing, not replacing, its wonderful landscape.

And he did it without spending massive amounts of taxpayer dollars.