Palouse Ridge Golf Club

Washington State University’s new 18-hole golf course will open in Aug. 2008 under the management of CourseCo, Inc.

The Palouse Ridge Golf Club is expected to make Pullman more desirable to future students and golfers alike. This public course will be complete with a restaurant and clubhouse which will be able to host weddings and special events.

The previous 50-year- old WSU owned nine-hole course was a very limited structure with only two full-time employees under University Recreations, according to Louise A. Sweeney, the project officer for Capital Planning and Development.

“The idea of a new golf course started about 25 years ago,” she said. “Our golf team couldn’t even play here besides practice.”

More recreational opportunities should be the result of this new facility; bringing in more students, staff and drawing people from the Palouse to come play.

“It can’t do anything but good,” Sweeney said.

There was a selection process to pick the company that would manage the new course. CourseCo came on board about a year ago, according to Sweeney, partly because of their company’s home-town feel.

According to Todd Lupkes, the superintendent for this CourseCo property, the company is based out of central California and will turn down properties if they fail to meet the company’s philosophy.

“We are deep in the environmental aspect of things,” he said. “We look at properties that are important to us, instead of finding a bunch to fit under our umbrella.”

CourseCo works with the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for golf courses, which is a certification program that strives to minimize harmful impacts on the environment by course operations. Within one year of opening, Palouse Ridge must be certified.

Lupkes is a WSU alumnus and is focused on interacting with students. The maintenance shop, located on Airport Road will house a lab for the Turf Management club.

“We’re providing a lot more opportunities than what’s typical,” he said.

Internships will be available for Turf Management students while general employment is open to all who apply, and the applications have already started coming. The restaurant will be owned by the same proprietors that own Fireside Grille and Pete’s Bar and Grill. It will seat about 100 people and be considered fine dining as a step up from Fireside, Lupkes said.

“This is a bigger advantage for the university versus anyone else,” Lupkes said. “You want to bring people to Pullman, and they didn’t come for the old course. We want to take this project to the national level. It helps to have a company that knows 100 percent of what they’re doing in the business.”

There are proposed fees for a round of golf at the course’s website palouseridge.wsu.edu, showing different costs for different classifications of people during certain times of the day. The cost for a WSU student will be $26 Monday through Thursday and $39 Friday through Sunday. The most expensive round would cost $91 for a non-resident during a ‘peak’ time during the weekend. To be considered a resident, you must live within 40 miles of Pullman.

Playing packages are being looked at to combine the Palouse course as well as others in the area, such as the Coeur d'Alene Resort Golf Course.

According to the Palouse Ridge website, the project was “Budgeted at $4 million, [and] construction of the clubhouse will be funded by private and corporate gifts. The course will become a prime location for students, alumni, faculty, staff and visitors to Pullman.”