Washington’s newest golf course is moving forward, a half hour from Olympia, and if it seems sluggish in its progress it’s more from the weather than the soggy economy.
“We lost six weeks to rain,” said Gene Bates, designer of Salish Cliffs, taking shape at the Little Creek Casino Resort property near Shelton.
Backed by a commitment from the Squaxin Island Tribe, owner of the Little Creek property, Bates and his team launched the Salish Cliffs project late in the building season of 2004. The tribe then shut it down for a few years while it dealt with necessary maintenance issues on the 250-acre site. It’s been full speed ahead since May 2009, Bates said, and only the persistent wet weather this spring slowed the pace and will prevent a planned “soft” opening of the course this fall.
“We’ll be out of here by mid-October,” said Bates. The completed course will rest and mature through the winter for a projected spring 2011 opening.
Bates didn’t have to bid on Salish Cliffs. The Squaxins reached out to him based on his design of Circling Raven in Worley, Idaho, one of the Northwest’s premier courses and a property of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.
The designer offered a guided tour of the developing course on a cloudy but dry day last week.
“We’re on the driving range tee right now,” he said, then corrected himself by 10 feet or so to indicate the middle of a huge pile of cleared timber and underbrush. It was one of a few places where you had to use your imagination – squinting seemed to help – to visualize what it will look like one day.
“It’s just amazing the transformation of raw land into a golf hole,” Bates said.
As we bumped along on rough gravel – the cart path is in and usable (for an SUV, on this day) over about half the course – the golf holes materialized, in varying stages of completion, before our eyes.
No holes are done, but many are roughed in with sod around greens and terraced tee boxes or with the fine basaltic sand that is the base for the putting surfaces.
The greens have been contoured, and are now getting or will soon be given the final “floating” (smoothing) prior to seeding.
Many of the pockets and indentations designated as bunkers show orange paint in jagged lines to indicate where Bates will cut the edges of the hazards. Several bunkers are already built and filled with strikingly white silica sand, obtained from the Spokane area.
Tees, greens and fairways will feature bentgrass of the T-1 cultivar.
Bates likes bentgrass, which he used in recent high-profile projects on the Monterey Peninsula: the multi-million-dollar enhancement at Carmel Valley Ranch Resort and in his extensive renovation of the two courses, Bayonet and Black Horse, at the old Fort Ord.
The density of bentgrass provides a natural defense against incursion by poa annua grasses. Bentgrass tolerates cold, the better to survive winter freezes, and it’s got a nice color, Bates said.
“I like the playability of the grass,” he said.
The primary roughs will be of rye grass, with fescue and bluegrasses in the other rough areas.
Bates didn’t have to bid on Salish Cliffs. The Squaxins reached out to him based on his design of Circling Raven in Worley, Idaho, one of the Northwest’s premier courses and a property of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.
He was given the latitude to select the ground for the golf course, and he designed the routing and grading and shaping.
The layout is nothing if not rugged, with significant elevation changes and tree-sided fairways that look narrow at this point of development but to Bates offer reasonably generous landing areas.
It’s been a challenging site, which is the way he likes to work.
“The more dramatic the site,” Bates said, “the better the chance of achieving a great golf design.”
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