For five years, members of the Wakonda Club, one of Greater Des Moines’ oldest and most prestigious country clubs, have tolerated noise and interruptions from construction crews.

This year, as the greenskeeping staff prepares the 18-hole golf course to open in the coming weeks, what will be most apparent to members is the peace and quiet. The construction has been finished.

The club has spent $2.1 million to dig out and completely change tees, bunkers and the driving range. The work has also included a new tennis facility with locker rooms, a bistro-style restaurant and a renovation for one of the main kitchens.

“We’re excited about 2003,” said Three Carpenter, Wakonda’s general manager. “This is the first time in years that the members won’t have to dodge bulldozers and other construction.”

The club’s former tennis building “was small and kind of an eyesore,” Carpenter said. The newly constructed version is a miniature replica of the clubhouse, he said. More than 200 children take part in Wakonda’s tennis program. The club has five clay and two artificial-grass courts. Given the popularity of the sport, the move to renovate the tennis facilities was popular, Carpenter said.

Other changes at the club include new signs and general landscaping work. The work on the golf course alone cost $1.6 million, Carpenter said. Every hole has had some modifications.

The changes to the golf course are so significant, according to irrigation technician Jaret Vasey, that anyone who hasn’t played Wakonda’s course since the construction began “wouldn’t recognize the tees or greens.”

The design work for Wakonda’s course was completed by Roger Rulewich, who heads the Roger Rulewich Group. He spent 34 years as a senior associate with golf course architecture company Robert Trent Jones Sr. Inc. Among the courses he has worked on include the No. 3 course at Chicago’s Medinah Country Club, which has been the site of three U.S. Opens and the 1999 PGA Championship.

“Having this guy in Iowa is really a big deal,” Carpenter said.

Another thing that needed upgrading at Wakonda is the club’s image, Carpenter said. The average age of its 730 members is 55 years old. To change that, managers have given the top chef a freer rein to create new meals, and the members’ kitchen has been renovated.

“Wakonda is generally thought of as an older club with older members,” Carpenter said. “We want to get the members excited.”

At the Hyperion Field Club, a new irrigation system has been installed, and the club has added a new parking lot for 300 cars. New landscaping work around the parking lot and the clubhouse has been finished.

These days, the biggest decision left for Hyperion’s managers is when to open the 18-hole golf course.

“We’re trying to keep our finger on the pulse of what everyone else is doing,” said Marshall Badgley, the club’s catering director.

At Glen Oaks Country Club, members are in the process of buying the half of the club they don’t currently own from Club Corp. The club is without a general manager, and other officials refused to comment about changes at the facility.

Officials at Des Moines Golf and Country Club didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

Of importance to golfers, the changes to the tees, greens and bunkers at Wakonda have made the course more difficult, according to John Tremme, the club’s golf course superintendent.     Two of the greens have been “flattened out” to make them more fair, he said.

“We definitely didn’t make it any easier,” he said. “The course record will probably stand.”