Parma unveils design for new Ridgewood Golf Course clubhouse and event center

News Source: cleveland.com

By John Benson

PARMA, Ohio -- The vision for the new Ridgewood Golf Course recently became clearer, with the goal being an Independence Day 2025 grand opening date.

This week, architecture and engineering firm American Structurepoint -- along with construction manager-at-risk Albert M. Higley Co. -- presented to both City Council and the Ridgewood Golf Course event committee its first renderings of the proposed new venue.

The current price tag falls somewhere between $10.5 million and $12.3 million.

“We’re really excited. It’s one of the biggest economic development projects we’ve had in a long time,” Mayor Tim DeGeeter said. “There’s been a lot of hard work among city officials who feel really great with the team we have with Higley and Structurepoint.

“They’re aligning and working very well together. We hope to break ground in the spring of 2024.”

The current plan calls for the construction of an 11,400-square-foot venue, along with outdoor amenity spaces such as patios, covered porches and a porte-cochère.

“We wanted to really focus on a community event center that can bring in golfers and non-golfers alike,” American Structurepoint Principal-Cleveland Operations Ed Kagel said.

“We want people to feel comfortable. You can have an event, wedding, banquet -- even a small gathering of folks in the community. They have a place to go, a place to call home,” he said.

“We wanted to capture a little bit of the old with the new, bring them together so you had a seamless center that could be transformational for the community, because we know we have one chance to do it every 100 years.”

The new layout -- including outdoor patio seating -- was designed to take advantage of the topography.

“The overall arc of this is it’s a business, so within that are things that will generate revenue for the Ridgewood Golf Course,” DeGeeter said.

In addition to the proposed 170-seat event center with a warming kitchen, there are six golf simulator bays located in the southern portion of the building.

“A lot of golf course facilities have found ways to generate revenue,” Kagel said. “We have an area with multiple simulators to drive winter leagues.

“Everyone can take advantage of it -- folks from the community and also, even better, bring people outside in to help generate that revenue.”

The current plan calls for 166 parking spaces. However, there’s talk of raising the current lower parking lot to be level with the clubhouse, which would create roughly 200 more spaces.

“We’re working in close partnership with Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) to look at the existing stormwater model and potential solutions that could allow us to build a retention pond,” Kagel added.

“If that becomes a solution, we’re looking at ways to optimize cut fill on the site to potentially raise that parking lot. We’re still in the planning phase, so we don’t have definitive results on that. We’ll have a better idea later this fall once we wrap up a planning study on drainage.”

While the new clubhouse and event center was originally estimated at $9 million, the mayor said inflation has raised the cost. The city will use a recently awarded $4 million grant from Cuyahoga County Council to help pay for the project.

Parma is also actively searching for additional state funds to close the gap. If unsuccessful, the plan is for the city to take out a bond.

Parma Auditor Brian Day previously told cleveland.com: “The fire station and the Justice Center will be falling off our bond schedule in the next couple of years. That will free up some opportunity for us to go ahead and look to secure some bond funding.”

The mayor noted that the Ridgewood Golf Course itself will remain open during construction.

Despite the fact that the current clubhouse is a triple-wide trailer, attendance hasn’t waned.

“This year, the numbers from the golf course going into September look very favorable,” DeGeeter said.

“In fact, the last three years the golf course, which is an enterprise fund, has made money, so we anticipate that going forward as well.”