Golf Balls Keep Fallin’ … City, Developer In Disagreement Over Land Next To Driving Range

Say your neighbor hits his golf balls into your yard year after year, and you never complain.

Then one day, you decide you want him to stop. But he argues he’s earned the right to keep lobbing chip shots onto your land.

Spokane Park Board officials say the city has won that right to a strip of land at the edge of the driving range at Indian Canyon Golf Course.

Developer Ron McCloskey is building duplexes on the 1.2-acre property on Sunset Hill.

While McCloskey wants his new homes protected from raining golf balls by a city-purchased net, parks officials want to buy the land - but not at the price set by the appraiser they hired.

This leaves the two sides at a standstill.

“This is just a land grab by the city,” said Mike Maurer, McCloskey’s attorney. “This is nothing but an attempt to bully private citizens.”

Park Board President Mark Casey thinks it’s the city that’s being bullied.

The developer wants the city to build the net because “we take care of his problem with our money,” Casey said.

“We’ve been using that land for 62 years … It didn’t come as a surprise to McCloskey that golf balls had a way of finding their way onto that little strip of land he purchased.”

The city has won the right of “prescriptive easement” to the property, Casey said. In simple terms, that means because the golf balls have fallen there since the course opened in 1935, the city has a right to continue using the land.

Maurer countered that the developer and the land’s former owners were just being good neighbors by not complaining about the golf balls.

McCloskey was out of town Thursday and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Two years ago, he bought the contested strip and several more acres on the northeast side of Westcliff Drive from the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane. The church owned the land for nearly 90 years, planning to build a school there, but the plans never materialized.

Last year, McCloskey started building apartments on the land across the street from the driving range. The city approached him about selling the property adjacent to the course, Maurer said.

The city’s appraiser set the land’s value at $125,000.

Parks officials balked at the price.

McCloskey went ahead with his plans, adding water and sewer service to the land, Maurer said.

In February, he began building the duplexes. He then wrote a letter to the city asking them to build a net to protect the homes from the golf balls.

Mike Stone of the Parks Department wrote back, saying the city had won an easement.

Stone refused to comment on the letters Thursday, saying the issue was being discussed in a closed-door session that afternoon.

In the golf tee’s current location, a net would have to be 50 to 70 feet tall to protect the homes, which may not be aerodynamically possible, Casey said. Otherwise, the city would have to move the tee back and build a 30-foot net, which would cost about $70,000, he said.

Maurer represented Steve and Leslie Ronald in their dispute with the city over property just north of the downtown Spokane Library. In December, the couple settled with the city for $1.9 million.

Map of driving range and disputed property