Road to PGA Championship Venue is No Longer at Risk of Falling into Lake Michigan

Drivers (and putters) heading to this week’s PGA Championship golf tournament will have the opportunity to take a new road that – to their benefit – is no longer falling into Lake Michigan.

Earlier this year, crews from the Sheboygan County Transportation Department completed work on County Highway LS (Lakeshore Road), which runs along Whistling Straits golf course just north of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, home to the last of this year’s four major men’s golf championships. Located off the shore of Lake Michigan, Whistling Straits consists of two 18-hole championship golf courses, The Straits and The Irish, with play beginning today at The Straits.

Also located off the shore of Lake Michigan, just north of the golf course, is County Highway LS. Sheboygan County hired Ayres Associates in 2011 to look at alternatives for relocating the highway, which was in jeopardy because of unstable shoreline bluffs. In other words, the road was falling into the lake.

“Some of our guardrail posts were exposed in the back,” Sheboygan County Transportation Director Greg Schnell says. “The bluff had slipped off and no longer supported the posts. It was right up to the asphalt.”

Following the study, the County hired Ayres to design the relocation of about 1.6 miles of Highway LS. The road was shifted to the west, off the lake, through undeveloped land. The new road is switching jurisdiction to the Town of Mosel and will be known only as Lakeshore Road. One of the Town’s roads, Dairyland Drive, will now be a County highway.

Mike Liebman, project manager for Ayres, says the relocation featured interesting aspects you don’t normally see on a road project. “Although the new route passed through open farm country, an amazing amount of coordination and cooperation had to take place to provide access to homes and properties that face the lake and away from the new road,” Mike says. “From County highway staff to Town of Mosel officials to local farmers to each and every property owner along the route, consensus for the best alternatives had to be worked through and reached.”

Transportation Director Schnell was pleased with how the new road turned out. “It looks good,” he says. “Our main focus was to provide safety. We needed to do something.”

Mike agrees that the situation was serious. “You can’t beat Mother Nature, and when she unleashed the power of Lake Michigan to finally erode away a segment of the shoreline bluffs supporting Highway LS, the County had to relocate the endangered roadway,” he says. “And now, located several hundred feet away from the shoreline, the roadway should be safe from Mother Nature’s fickle whims for the foreseeable future.”

Are you heading to the tournament? Tell us about it!