January 25, 2007

New clubhouse opens at the Golf Club at Boulder Ridge

Elegant facade overlooks scenic Almaden Valley

By Carol Rosen
Staff Writer

It took nearly two years, but the new 21,000-square-foot clubhouse at the Golf Club at Boulder Ridge lends an elegance to its scenic overview of Almaden Valley.

The new clubhouse for The Golf Club at Boulder Ridge is a beautiful home for its 230 members offering scenic views of the Almaden and Santa Clara Valleys from most of its rooms. Photos by Carol Rosen

The new clubhouse, which is situated at the cornerstone of three rancheros settled when the Spanish came to California, is just yards away from the original clubhouse that consisted of trailers and an outside dining area.

The new clubhouse includes a grill that is open daily, a private bar and lounge, a weekend fine dining room, several private dinning rooms and a living room waiting area/bar. It also offers a library—that can be turned into a private dining room—and a boardroom that also can be transformed into an elegant dining room for dinner meetings, as well as a pro shop and locker rooms for men and women and a spa for members complete with masseuses.

The golf club has been open since Sept. 1, 2001, but its new clubhouse opened just in time for the 2006 holidays. Blair Barry of Barry & Volkman, an architecture firm, designed the clubhouse. Glenda Garcia, who owns the club along with her husband Rocke Garcia, designed the interior. She proudly shows off the elegant rooms including some very nice touches that make the clubhouse a real showplace.

Some of these include glass-beaded wallpaper in the niche near the entrance. The restrooms themselves feature unique design elements such as inlaid and glass tiles with the newest sinks set in granite.

The wood throughout the clubhouse is made from Lyptus a sustainable wood grown in Brazil. According to Wikipedia, the wood is a hybrid of eucalyptus trees, which thrive in the warm climate, and can be harvested in 15 years compared with 50-75 years in colder climates. It’s grown on plantations that are combined with native species to preserve the rain forest ecosystem. Weyerhaeuser, which produces the trees, says it generates 30 times the volume of wood per acre compared with unmanaged forests and it is not a rain forest species.

The stone throughout the clubhouse was manmade to match the stone along Old Quarry Road where the club is situated. The fireplace façade in the library/dining room was hand-carved by a man from Michigan, said Glenda, and is one of only four that he made in his life. She was told the story, but not the man’s name, when she bought the piece at an auction in San Francisco.

The Vintner’s Room, one of the private dining rooms, offers a marble, hand-carved wine design set into the marble tile from Italy. The tiles were made by women wearing sandpaper-like gloves to get the points of the leaves defined. The grapes are separate pieces of marble set in bunches.

Next to that room is a private wine seller for members who wish to store their wine. Each has its own locker and keys.

Across the hall from the Vintner’s Room is a boardroom, with all the accoutrements that board meetings require including plugs for computers and special white boards that also serve as projection screens. The room seats 16 to 22 people.

After a meeting, those attending can play a round of golf or just enjoy the scenery until dinner. At dinner, the room is transformed into an elegant private dining room, with the tables separated and decorated with flower arrangements that fit into special carved areas that hold the computer plugs, as well as candelabras and special china, silver and crystal.

The floors are carpeted or covered with large ceramic pavers. A staff of 74 serves the members on the golf course and throughout the clubhouse. The office staff consists of six people including the Garcias.

The view from the grill. Glenda Garcia says that members often take a chair and spend some quiet time just looking at the view.

When the club first opened, it had only 10 members. The clubhouse consisted of two doublewide trailers and a portable kitchen that served beer and wine only to members. “You can’t have a bar without a permanent facility,” Glenda said.

Obviously, today’s “19th hole” is much more comfortable. The membership has grown to 230 members –corporate, individual or family—that will reach a maximum of 400 members only.

One reason for the maximum cutoff is to ensure that members don’t have to wait to tee off. While, “my members are beyond patient,” there are many who golf daily, said Glenda. “They golf in the rain,” she added. If there is a wait, she says it’s typically no more than 15 minutes.

Award-winning golf course architect Brad Benz designed the 18-hole course, which offers views of the Almaden and Santa Clara Valleys. It was built to protect, enhance and use the area’s natural features. The club also offers a practice facility including a grass practice range, an 11,000-sqaure foot practice putting green, a chipping area and a bunker practice green.

The Garcias are thinking of adding an event facility to the club, said Glenda. This 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot facility would be available to club members for informal and formal gatherings. If built, it also would be open to the public for weddings and other events, although club members would get preferential bookings and rate discounts.

Members can sponsor charity events, on Mondays, when the club is closed. It has been home to charity tournaments including those to raise money for the Diabetes Society and San Jose State University, for example. Members also can have small tournaments or sponsor corporate groups including boards of directors or sales forces.

There were some disagreements when the golf club was first proposed. The golf course contains ancient Ohlone Indian caves which have since been protected as a contract stipulation upon development of the golf course. In addition, there was some disagreement when the golf course was built as to whether it would be semi-private and allow some public play times.

However, Glenda noted that those disagreements “go back more than 10 years. We’ve had more thoughts on what to do with the property. Valley Christian wanted to build a school there, and an electronics firm wanted to place a manufacturing plant in the location. But we finally decided on a golf course. And, we decided to make it private because there are so many public courses available,” she said.

When asked about the neighbors, Glenda said, “they were against us [in the beginning], but now they think the club is wonderful.”

The club is open Tuesday through Saturday for members only. For more information, or to join the club, contact Charles Conway, membership director at (408) 323-9900 or e-mail him at Charles@boulderridgegolfclub.com. You also can visit the Web site at www.boulderridegegc.com.