Texas Lawyer featured Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner Jeff Dorrill in a story looking behind the scenes at the complex, multi-pronged legal work required to turn property that once provided Dallas with a landfill into a PGA-worthy golf course that serves as SMU’s home base; has a nonprofit partner that teaches inner-city kids life skills through golf; and hosts the AT&T Byron Nelson tournament for its 50th anniversary starting May 14.
Here’s an excerpt:
What once was an abandoned landfill located south of downtown Dallas has become a links-style golf course that, beginning May 14, will host the AT&T Byron Nelson tournament for its 50th anniversary run. “In the range of 20 lawyers” worked to turn what at first may have seemed like a long-odds proposition of building a course to attract PGA tournaments into reality, said Haynes and Boone Dallas tax Partner Jeff Dorrill, lead attorney for the project.
Dorrill said he got the first call about the project in July 2012 from Jonas Woods, founder, president and chief executive officer of Dallas-based Woods Capital. Woods, who by his own estimation has been involved in one way or another in about a dozen golf course developments, had called to talk about building a golf course on a sand-capped landfill in South Dallas.
“It seemed like a challenge,” Dorrill said.
Calling it a challenge may have been an understatement. Dorrill and Matt Martin, a shareholder in Addison Law in Dallas who also was involved in legal work for the golf course, recently likened working on the project to trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. ...
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