The standard narrative on Switzerland covers private banks, cuckoo clocks and an active citizenry. It doesn’t usually include economic deprivation – the country has the highest average nominal wealth of anywhere in the world, and the eighth highest average GDP.
But the commune of Andermatt, high in the Alps, and long an important crossroads for those travelling across the mountains, has a slightly different story to tell. Andermatt lies at the foot of four important Alpine passes, and in particular, since the opening of the so-called Devil’s Bridge across the Schöllenen Gorge in the year 1200, it has been on the main route from the German-speaking north of the country, over the famous St Gotthard Pass and into the Italian speaking region of Ticino to the south of the mountains. For hundreds of years, the people of Andermatt earned their living as mountain guides and extracting tolls from travellers who came this way.
When the Gotthard Rail Tunnel opened in 1882, allowing people to cross the Alps without coming through Andermatt, the decline of the town began. For sure, the rail tunnel sat alone for almost a hundred years, but traffic through the village fell considerably. The opening of the road tunnel, in 1980, completed the process of bypassing Andermatt and its high Alpine valley (another, longer tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, will open this year).
As the travellers moved out of Andermatt, so others moved in. For many years, the town was a major base for the Swiss Army; much training took place around the valley, and the military became the main underpinnings of the local economy. The area was the heartland of the Swiss ‘National Redoubt’, a fortified, mountainous area to which, in the event of an invasion, the country’s forces would retreat to make a last stand. About ten years ago, though, changes in the way the Swiss military was run and trained meant a decision to close the base at Andermatt.
This closure left the area’s economy in a parlous state. Not only was the town and its surrounds scarred with many old military buildings, but the main element of economic activity had gone. Local leaders concluded that tourist development was the best answer to Andermatt’s difficulties, and, through mutual contacts, the Egyptian businessman Samih Sawiris, chief executive of Orascom Development, was asked to advise. Sawiris, according to local information, said that the project the town’s leaders were proposing was too small, and that was the end of it. But later, the contact was reopened, and a much larger development started to emerge.
What Samih Sawiris – who is undertaking the Andermatt development privately, not through Orascom, though the company is now a shareholder – proposed was nothing short of the total redevelopment of the area. The scale is breathtaking, wholly on a par with the remarkable Alpine scenery.
A few years ago, Switzerland – long a favourite residence/tax haven among the international rich – passed new laws making it almost impossible for non-Swiss citizens to buy residential property in the country. Remarkably, though, the federal government, recognising the bind in which the withdrawal of the military had left the Andermatt area, granted an exception to this law for the Andermatt development. It is, therefore, almost the only place in the country where foreigners can buy Swiss homes. The grand masterplan calls for 42 apartment houses, which will include a total of 490 residences, six hotels of four or five stars, of which the first, the super-luxury Chedi, has already been completed and a second is under construction, and around 25 chalets. On top of that, there is the new golf course, designed by German architect Kurt Rossknecht, and an investment of more than €200 million in the ski area, connecting it up with the neighbouring area of Sedrum. It is a vast development, involving an investment of several billion euros.
Several of the apartment houses are already open, and sales have been brisk. The Chedi hotel, as well as straightforward hotel rooms and suits, also includes a substantial number of apartments; the developers run a rental pool, so buyers can, if they wish, put their property back into the pool to make it available for others to rent.
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Rossknecht’s golf course at Andermatt is that, although a mountain course in its location and altitude (the whole course lies at more than 1,400 metres above sea level) it is relatively flat. Only a few holes have dramatic elevation changes – the third and fourth both move up the valley side, while the par three fifth and the par four sixth come back down again.
On the second nine, the course moves away from the hillside and into the middle of the valley. At one point, on the fifteenth, it comes very close to the Reuss river, without actually engaging with the water itself. In some ways, this is disappointing, but the nature of mountain streams is to move dramatically between a torrent and a trickle; it’s hard for a golf course to accommodate both without staying a good distance away from the flow.
It’s those holes on the front nine that use the hillside that offer the most interest. The third and fourth are both relatively short par fours, at least for their yardage, though the climbing involved will make them play longer. The sixth, in principle quite a long hole, will in some ways play relatively short, as the valleyed nature of the fairway encourages golfers to whack the driver, and the downslope will deliver a lot of run. The green, though, is angled slightly from the fairway, and pitch shots will not be straighftorward, even if short. The course as a whole features a surprising number of water hazards; lakes and ponds seem unnatural in this mountain environment, though of course the need to drain the course in springtime, when snowmelt is flooding off the mountains, makes them rather more understandable. The clubhouse will open in spring 2016, when the course itself will see its formal opening.
There is more golf in the area. There are nine hole courses at Sedrun – the resort that will in the future be the twin of Andermatt, from a skiing point of view – and at Realp, further up the valley towards the Gotthard Pass. The course at Realp, founded by legendary Swiss skier Bernhard Russi, is everything the lowland golfer might expect a mountain course to be; as well as distances, the markers on the tees include the elevation change on the hole – this writer has never before encountered sub 300 metre par fours that climb or descend more than 50 metres. The split fairway par four eighth, though, is an outstanding golf hole by anyone’s standards. The Realp course summits at more than 1,700 metres above sea level; few golfers will have played so high.
This article first appeared in Golf Course Architecture – Issue 43.