SNOHOMISH – Echo Falls Golf Club has gone through plenty of changes in recent years, and not always for the better.
Now, with a new general manager, superintendent, catering director and chef – all brought in since the first of the year – and with a new head pro due sometime in the next few weeks, everyone from the golf course staff to the golfers themselves hope these latest changes are a sign of better days to come.
Unhappy guests have raised multiple issues in recent years, but most complaints are essentially about an Echo Falls management team that critics say has been unresponsive – indifferent, really – to its most loyal customers. In particular, both the current president and a past president of the Echo Falls Men’s Club say there has not been reasonable dialogue on a variety of topics, partly because the course has changed general managers and head pros with uncommon frequency in the past decade.
And when suggestions have been made, said former club president Dennis Morris, “they seem to fall on deaf ears.”
Kenny Parsons, the current president, said the men’s club has about 75 members, which is down from about 300 five years ago. Unhappiness among club members, he said, “is absolutely the reason” for the drop.
The grievances, Parsons went on, include such things as unpopular changes to the course, the disappointing quality of golf carts, insufficient restaurant staff at certain times, and sometimes spotty relations with folks in the pro shop.
“We’re struggling to build a good club because of some of these things,” Parsons said. “We’ve got a lot of frustrated (members) … and I’m constantly explaining to them that we are trying to do the best we can.”
Still, “sometimes you get tired of beating your head against the wall,” Parsons said. And the irony, he added, “is that we’re trying to spend money there.”
Kathy Blumenstein, who became the new general manager on May 1 after nine years in the same job at Arlington’s Gleneagle Golf Course, knows some men’s club members have not felt appreciated in recent years, “and they are right. They were not appreciated. … I won’t deny it.
“There was no follow-through before,” she said. “I hate saying that, but it’s the truth. Things were not handled properly with the people that were here before and that’s why they’re not here now, or at least some of them.”
Though Blumenstein admits to “a revolving door” for top personnel at Echo Falls, she vows that she is “here for the long term. I’m looking to move over here and I’ve let (club members) know several times that I’m not going anywhere.”
Moreover, she said, “things are going to start happening. The right people are in the right positions right now, and I think it’s going to work.”
“I think Kathy is the right person to do the job,” Morris acknowledged, “but I’m concerned about how much autonomy she’ll have to make Echo Falls a course you can play and brag about. … I’m a homeowner (in an adjoining development) and I want to be proud of it. I want to tell folks ‘Come out and play Echo Falls,’ but I have not been able to do that yet.”
Through all the recent controversy and change, Echo Falls has remained both a pleasant course and a fine test of golf. Located off Highway 522 between Monroe and Maltby, it is one of five public and private courses owned by Microsoft multimillionaire-turned-golf enthusiast Scott Oki. Though Echo Falls measures just 5,886 yards from the blue tees (par 70), there is nothing scant about the challenges awaiting on most holes. Many require accurate shots either over hazards or between hazards, and wayward hitters can count on losing golf balls.
Echo Falls also boasts perhaps the two top finishing holes in Snohomish County. The par-4 17th hole is 442 yards with a second shot across a pond to reach the green in regulation, and the picturesque par-3, 151-yard 18th hole is a tee shot over water to essentially an island green.
Though Oki’s idea to let native grasses grow in certain areas to several inches in height has been met with some discontent (“I’ve had people complain about hurting themselves trying to hit the ball out of there,” Parsons said), the fairways and greens are attractive and well-manicured. The setting is marred by overhead power lines, which emit a continuous hum, but that is one of the few aesthetic blemishes.
Echo Falls also offers one of the best deals for avid players in the county. For $200 a month (one year minimum), golfers can play unlimited golf with a cart, range balls and other benefits.
Which means there are plenty of reasons to recommend Echo Falls, even if challenges remain. And criticisms aside, people are showing up. According to Mark Nesheim, the regional operations manager of Oki Golf, the course did around 34,000 rounds in 2003 and some 38,000 rounds in 2004, and he hopes to crack 40,000 this year.
A good way to reach that kind of goal, Morris said, would be to make sure regular customers feel welcomed and valued.
“As long as I’ve been a men’s club member,” he said, “I’ve never felt like we’ve been treated with respect. But I’ve always maintained hope, and that’s why I’m still there.”
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