This wouldn't happen to be the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium competition, would it? If so, I'll probably see you at the launch, and probably at the presentations the evening before. I mentored a team in the second and third contests (I think this is roughly the sixth?).
If that's the contest you're in, you won't be able to use single motor-based deployment. Among the rules you'll see
"All parts of the rocket must be recovered together using an electronically deployed parachute recovery system"
That doesn't mean you can't just pop a parachute at apogee, but you'll have to do it electronically, not through the motor's ejection charge. In fact, with that much weight at 1500 feet, I think you can be sure that the successful teams will be ones that simply use an altimeter to blow the main at apogee. That's going to make your altitude bay design a little easier, at least. You might think about using the altimeter's main deployment output as a backup charge.
In fact, if you've got a lot of weight in the rocket, an altimeter-based apogee deployment is going to be far better than motor ejection, because with motor ejection you have to estimate the proper delay so that you eject while the rocket is traveling fairly slowly, at apogee. If you miss, and deploy early or late, with all that weight (/momentum) things will come apart dramatically. If you use an altimeter instead, you don't have to guess at when the rocket will be at apogee: the altimeter will simply detect the right time to fire the deployment charge, and fire it. There's another thread on this forum about when to use dual deployment: this is a perfect example of a situation in which you want to use altimeter-based deployment even though you're not concerned about how far the rocket will drift.
Placement of the weight is going to be really important. Are you using RockSim on this project? Be sure to put some wind in your simulations. If you're too nose-heavy, there's a risk of weather-cocking too much into the wind, and not reaching your 1500 feet target. I think you'll want to be careful to keep the stability margin right there in the 1-2 caliber range.
A big challenge is going to be recovery design (obviously). If that 50 pound estimate (above) is right, that IS a lot of weight to put in a 4" rocket. It has to go somewhere, and so does your parachute, and it's going to have to be a pretty large parachute. When your charge blows, the weighted part is going to stay put, and everything else (the remaining 10 or so pounds of rocket) is going to be blown off of that part. It'll be important to think about what's where when that happens.
Don't worry at all about drifting away - from 1500 feet with significant weight, that's not going to happen to anyone. Anyone who lands in the trees or ponds, it'll be because they didn't boost vertically: get that part right, and you'll come down on or near the runway.
