CLE ELUM – When folks from the Puget Sound area take vacation trips to the beautiful Sunriver Resort in central Oregon, they often return with two questions.
One, is there any doubt Sunriver is among the premier golf destinations in the Pacific Northwest?
And two, how come isn’t there a place like Sunriver right here in Washington?
Good questions, these. The answer to the first, obviously, is an unqualified yes. To the second, though, there has never been a very good answer.
Until now.
Over the next few years a spacious, stylish and scenically stunning development just east of Snoqualmie Pass, barely two hours from greater Seattle, will unfold in multiple phases. This planned resort community called Suncadia, which is located just outside Cle Elum and within a few miles of the rustic community of Roslyn, will include some 3,000 homesites, additional housing/lodging in the form of condominiums, townhouses, cabins, cottages and inns; and scores of other amenities, including an amphitheater, conference center, fitness center and bicycling/jogging/cross country skiing trails.
And, of course, golf.
Like Sunriver, Suncadia (formerly known as MountainStar) will offer golf courses as good as any in the region. One, The Prospector Course designed by the Arnold Palmer Course Design Company, will open its first nine holes to the public on Monday. A second private course to be called The Tumble Creek Club and created by noted designer Tom Doak – among other courses worldwide, he designed the Pacific Dunes course at Bandon Dunes, Ore. – is scheduled to begin play in 2005. A third public course by a yet-to-be-named designer will open in the next few years, and there is also discussion of a possible fourth course for sometime further in the future.
For now, there is just the front nine at The Prospector Course. According to head pro Brady Hatfield, the entire 18 holes was due to open in July, but the grass on three holes did not grow properly because of poor weather last fall and eventually it was necessary to reseed. Now, “because we couldn’t speed Mother Nature up,” Hatfield said, “we’re targeting Labor Day weekend” for the full 18 holes.
That setback aside, he went on, The Prospector Course “is a fabulous resort golf course built in a mountain setting. From a routing and playing standpoint, this golf course is phenomenal. They just did a phenomenal job of leaving the right amount of trees and a phenomenal job of clearing the right amount of trees. The view from the tee frames every hole visually.
“It is,” Hatfield added, “as good as any mountain golf course I’ve ever seen.”
One hole that will not open initially but should nonetheless be seen by early visitors is No. 10, which plays at 407 yards from the back tees and has 125 feet of elevation drop in the first 225 yards. The tee is on a high overlook facing west with a panoramic view of the Cle Elum River valley beyond the green and the Cascade Mountains off in the distance.
Though the Prospector Course “was not designed with any one hole in mind as a signature hole, No. 10 will probably identify itself as such,” Hatfield said. “From the tee, there is an incredible view of the entire hole. That hole will be one that should certainly leave a lasting impression of Suncadia.”
Even with the back nine not yet open, No. 10 “is one hole we certainly would want (guests) to see,” he said.
Also impressive will be The Prospector Course’s upcoming 34,000 square-foot clubhouse, with 18 lodging units on an upper floor. Construction is already under way and should be completed by next summer.
Hatfield has been involved with the openings of other prominent Northwest courses, most notably Trophy Lake Golf and Casting in Port Orchard and Langdon Farms Golf Club outside of Portland, Ore., but says what is happening at Suncadia “is just much bigger” than those other facilities.
“Golf is the first true amenity to the resort that we are offering,” he said. “We are going to be introducing Suncadia and our product and level of services, and we are going to introduce that via golf to the public.”
J.J. Collins, vice president of marketing and sales at Suncadia, says early visitors to Suncadia frequently cite the similarity to Sunriver. That comparison works “in very general terms,” he said, though “we’d like to think, with all due deference to our colleagues from Sunriver, that we can … provide an even more enjoyable experience for people from the Puget Sound area.”
Suncadia, in fact, has actual ties to Sunriver. A company called Lowe Enterprises, through its hospitality group Destination Hotels and Resorts, operates Sunriver and will also operate portions of Suncadia.
At the same time, there are decided differences between the two. Suncadia will encompass some 6,000 acres, making it almost twice the size of Sunriver. Because the number of homesites is comparable, Suncadia’s property owners will generally enjoy larger lot sizes. In addition, Suncadia will have a central village a la Whistler, B.C., with many shops, restaurants and other services.
Collins had previously worked at the resort community in Vail, Colo., and when first approached about coming to Suncadia he was astonished to learn there were no similar resorts in Washington.
“I said, ‘That can’t be,’ because Washington is so beautiful and has such a varied environment from the islands out to the eastern plains and everything in between,” he said. “So the fact that this may be the only master planned resort community in the state that is going to be developed just amazes me.”
Based on early indications, there should be no trouble selling all the available homesites at Suncadia, despite the hefty price tag – six figures, at a minimum, and on up to several hundred thousand dollars for the prime lots. In January, a Seattle newspaper story about the resort community appeared on a Sunday morning. By late afternoon, some 65 families had showed up in the Suncadia sales office.
“On a normal Sunday we would have had maybe 10 or 12 families,” Collins said. “On that same day we had another 45 or 50 people that called. And it’s been like that ever since.”
The response has been so brisk, in fact, that the first batch of approximately 400 homesites is sold out. A second offering for lots on the private course is scheduled for late summer or early fall, with additional areas of Suncadia becoming available up to a projected completion in 2013.
“We tapped into a market,” Collins said, “and the pent-up demand is very substantial.”
Hatfield, meanwhile, has been busily seeing his golf course draw near to completion. Busy enough that he has scant time for daydreaming, though he still sometimes imagines the thrill of seeing Suncadia in its finished form.
“I do that less now because we’re going full bore into getting the golf course opened,” he said, “but when I entertained coming to Suncadia and joining this team, I thought about that a lot. Projects of this magnitude and this quality just don’t come around very often. We’ll certainly never see something like this again in Washington and we may not see another quite like this anywhere.”
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