49ers' new digs means new grass on the way

Like the Press Democrat on Facebook

Follow the Press Democrat on Twitter: @NorthBayNews

LIVINGSTON - Befitting a brand-new, $1.3 billion sports arena, the Levi's Stadium turf is springy, uniform and brilliant green. It feels soft and inviting to the touch. It looks perfectly manicured. And pretty soon, it will actually reside in Levi's Stadium.

For now, the grass that will one day support the exploits of Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis is a long, thin strip in the upper San Joaquin Valley. It's on a farm that occupies a sleepy, square-mile pocket between Interstate 5 and Highway 99, about 17 miles south of Kaepernick's home in Turlock, on property formerly owned by Charles Howard (who owned the racehorse Seabiscuit) and the Gallo wine family. The address of the farm is Livingston, but it's closer to a hamlet called Stevinson.

Very soon, this grass will be property of the 49ers. For now, it's still Greg Dunn's baby.

Dunn, a tall Midwestern transplant, is Northern California sales manager for West Coast Turf, a quietly powerful company that provides grass to every natural-turf professional stadium in California and Arizona but one - University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. - plus many colleges and golf courses, including those at Mayacama, Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club, and The Links at Bodega Harbour.

Tucked into a wedge of valley floor between the Merced and San Joaquin rivers, the NorCal West Coast Turf farm (the company has several sites in Southern California, too) sits atop a deep layer of what Dunn calls "the sandiest soil in the Western United States" - sand washed out of the Sierra Nevada peaks to the east.

"We're farming the other half of Halfdome," Dunn said, referring to the iconic Yosemite Park formation that is visible from the facility on particularly clear days. "All of this layering from the mountains is coming into the valley."

Sandy soil doesn't work for a lot of crops, but it's perfect for, say, yams and sweet potatoes. And grass. Water drains quickly from sand, encouraging growth of deep roots.

Founded in 1990, West Coast Turf also grows grass for the home consumer, berries for the Driscoll's corporation and herbs for a company in Turlock. But it's primarily known for its high-profile sports fields. That made it the natural choice for the 49ers - along with the fact that the company grew sod for Candlestick Park for almost all of the soon-to-be-imploded stadium's final 30 years.

A large sports venue makes unique demands upon its turf. It has to look good practically year-round.

And it must be hardy and regenerative enough to withstand the pounding of - in Levi's case - at least 29 men at a time (including game officials), many of them weighing upward of 300 pounds, all stomping around in cleats.

West Coast Turf grows several varieties of grass here, including two types of Bermuda grass.

That variety is known as the bane of suburban lawn tenders, but Bermuda hybrids are a great choice for sports fields. They're durable and relatively cold-tolerant, and they use less water than fescues, a trait with skyrocketing value during this drought.

Dunn is partial to Bermudas for another reason: They don't spread pollen.

"I'm allergic to grass," Dunn said, aware of the irony. "With the wrong grass, I'll break out in hives."

The 49ers have long used one of the Bermuda hybrids, Tifway II, at both Candlestick and their practice facilities in Santa Clara.

Levi's Stadium, however, will be carpeted with Bandera Bermuda, a newer product that groundskeepers are hailing as a supergrass. Levi's will not be the first Bay Area football facility to feature this variety. The Raiders have used Bandera in their end zones for three years. And after the A's were eliminated from the playoffs last fall, the entire Coliseum field was resodded with it.

Bandera was virtually unknown on the West Coast until 2010. Until then, the dominant Bermuda strains came from the USDA Agricultural Center in Tifton, Ga., and their names - Tifway, Tifgreen - made that clear. This new hybrid was developed by a company in Bandera, a town in the hill country of central Texas.

West Coast Turf quickly contracted to be the West Coast supplier of Bandera. But even Dunn may have originally underestimated its virtues.

For one thing, Bandera is very shade-tolerant for a Bermuda grass, an important point when you consider that the high-sided bowl shape of most stadiums means heavy winter shading at the south end. It also has strong, fibrous roots. When he bent down to a thin strip of leftover Bandera in Livingston, it took Dunn several tries to yank a piece out of the ground. He said no other variety on the farm would give him so much trouble.