WSU Plans To Expand Golf Course Upsets Residents Draft Proposal To Double 9 Holes Angers Friends Of Pullman Park

A draft plan to double the size of Washington State University’s 9-hole golf course is fueling a fairway feud here.

Residents concerned about a small park want public hearings before WSU finalizes a 140-acre expansion of its 98-acre course.

The land in question surrounds university-owned Roundtop Park, a five-acre knoll at the edge of Pullman with panoramic views of the Palouse and mountains. Roundtop’s proximity to campus has popularized it with joggers, pedestrians and mountain bikers during the day, and amorous youth after dark.

But the park’s boundaries will be halved to 2.5 acres under the proposal, alarming WSU Arboretum Committee member Scotty Cornelius.

“It will shrink the park … and destroy its pastoral ambiance, just so (WSU President) Sam Smith can take his industrial strength donors up there to wow ‘em,” Cornelius said.

The location adjacent to the current golf course is ideal for a clubhouse, admit members of the team studying the proposed expansion, but even a preliminary plan hasn’t been hatched, they say.

“We haven’t been confident enough in what we’re doing to make a big deal out of it,” said Compton Union Building Director Tim McCarty, who heads the team.

Golfers and non-golfers have been taking swings at each other in Pullman’s political arena for years. After city residents defeated a 1995 municipal golf course proposal, WSU appointed a five-member team to study expansion. The group’s been working with Trillium Corp., a Bellingham-based development company specializing in resort golf courses.

Trillium CEO David Syre, a WSU alum, offered the company’s design services for free. The resulting conceptual plans surround the hilltop park with a 150-car parking lot, a clubhouse and 250 high-end residential housing lots that would be sold to offset the golf course’s $1 million-plus construction costs.

“I’m not opposed to the golf course,” said Pullman resident Cynthia Hosick, who has been active in preserving the park.

“I think the two can coexist nicely as long as it’s planned so the traffic doesn’t impose on the peace and quiet and natural character of the park.”

The park has historical significance. It borders the old, maple-lined Moscow-Pullman carriage route, and was a popular pull-over spot for kissing couples. Daffodils planted by former WSU President Wilson Compton’s wife, Helen, still bloom in spring.

In 1991, Hosick co-chaired park improvement efforts to add a memorial trail, wooden signs and boulders for preventing four-wheel-drive damage.

“Lots of hours of blood, sweat and tears went into putting those trails in and digging holes for the fence posts,” Hosick said.

The tears were for Jerry Newbrey, a WSU veterinary professor killed in a 1990 mountaineering accident. His friends and students were among those fixing up Roundtop, a place he cherished and had lobbied the city council to preserve.

At the time, WSU agreed to designate the perimeter path as the Jerry Newbrey Memorial Trail, Hosick said. The draft plans indicate development of the park’s lower boundaries, where the trail is located.

“That they are going to go back and wipe it out irritates me when it was named after somebody who was an extremely valuable and well-loved teacher on their campus,” she said.

A city considering encroaching on a park with a golf course would need a zone change or conditional use permit, Cornelius said, “but WSU’s central administration is a 500-pound gorilla that doesn’t have to answer to anyone.”

WSU maintains it is answering to someone - student and community demand for more golf.

The school teaches more than 500 new golfers annually, dumping 2,000 more players onto the greens every two years. For the WSU golf team, only nine holes means no home course for tournaments.

“From my standpoint as a golfer, the community is golf starved,” said WSU News and Information Director Al Ruddy, one of the expansion project team members.

Golfing options available to Lewiston residents have doubled since the 1950s, Ruddy said. Over the same period, Spokane’s supply of courses has tripled; Coeur d’Alene’s has quadrupled.

Pullman’s course is simply too crowded, agrees avid golfer Leo Ressa, owner of Leo’s Shoe Service. Ressa takes his three sons to Clarkston instead.

“Golfers get a bad rap here because a lot of people think it’s a rich man’s sport. That’s total baloney,” Ressa said. “Golf’s the fastest-growing sport in the U.S.”

WSU officials say once they have cost estimates, all interested parties will have input. The team hopes to have a proposal before top administrators and the regents by mid-summer, McCarty said.

“I’m not scheduling any tee times on the 18th hole,” McCarty said. “If this happens it will be a good thing for the campus community. But if it doesn’t, I’ve got other work to do.”

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