Owners seek to save course

Posted: Wednesday, Apr 09, 2008 - 10:32:14 pm PDT
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By BRIAN WALKER
Staff writer 

Price raises eyebrows; sides pledge commitment to find solution

POST FALLS -- The future of the Prairie Falls Golf Club remains uncertain.

Stakeholders would like to see the privately owned, financially strapped Post Falls course survive.

However, the 18-hole, 120-acre course listed at $6 million has raised concerns that it's being marketed more as development property than a golf course.

Copper Basin Construction, which is selling lots in the 52-lot Grayling Estates subdivision at Spokane Street and Prairie Avenue with the promise of unlimited golf rights, wants to ensure the course is protected from development through an easement.

"Our interest in this issue deals with this easement and our need to protect our rights under this agreement," said Steve White, Copper Basin's president. "This easement differs from the other memberships that were sold by Prairie Falls Golf, LLC in that it is recorded against the property. It is our opinion, and the opinion of our legal counsel, that this easement would preclude development of the property."

Keith Coultrap, one of the course's owners, called the concern a "misnomer" and wonders what the fuss is about.

"Our goal is to maintain this as an 18-hole golf course and provide development alternatives that would provide us with the cash flow to reduce our debt," Coultrap said. "That golf course is going nowhere. If it's sold, it will be sold as a golf course and any development that is done would have to fall within the guidelines of the city of Post Falls.

"I don't think the city will let someone come in and develop the course. Besides, who would want to develop the course in this economic climate?"

Coultrap said the course's owners want to keep their options open on reducing a roughly $3 million debt and selling the property is just one of them. There have been no offers on the property, he said. The owners have not discussed trying to sell nine holes and keep nine as a golf course. It's for sale as an 18-hole course, he said.

Officials from the city and Prairie Falls Homeowners Association have said they are not interested or can't buy the course.

Coultrap said coming back to the city with a proposal to develop a small portion of the course has not been ruled out, but the owners are not currently working with any developers on such a plan.

The City Council last year unanimously denied Quest Development's plan to build 10 three-unit condo buildings on the course's fifth hole on 3.2 acres at the northwest corner of Idaho and Poleline.

"That was a significant blow to us," Coultrap said. "That would have reduced our debt by almost a third."

However, Coultrap said he was encouraged after he and fellow course owner Tim Morton met this week with Mayor Clay Larkin, city administrator Eric Keck and Prairie Falls homeowners president Kevin McCrink about the situation.

"We did reiterate that we cannot afford the land, but that we do believe that there has to be a solution out there that will help the course," Keck said.