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Property sales open this week for 6,000-acre development at Roslyn

By Elizabeth Rhodes
Seattle Times staff reporter

DAPHNE HOUGARD The Cle Elum River meanders though the site of the 6,000-acre Suncadia Resort. Some 1,215 acres on both sides of the river are being preserved as a conservation easement.

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It's a six-hour drive from Seattle to Bend, Ore., but that hasn't stopped Seattleites from snapping up 20 percent of the properties around the upscale Sunriver Resort.

Soon the kind of four-season amenities that attract them to Sunriver will be just 90 minutes away. That's because some of the same people who own that resort now are building another. Called Suncadia, it's just across Snoqualmie Pass adjacent to I-90 at Roslyn in Kittitas County.

Billed as Washington's first four-star, four-season destination resort, Suncadia officially begins selling home sites this week for what may become a mega-attraction, thanks to its forested location on the drier, sunnier side of the Cascades.

Covering some 6,000 acres — that's nearly 10 square miles — Suncadia today is just a series of gravel roads winding among pine trees; gentle hills; and one of three championship-caliber, 18-hole golf courses that eventually will dot the property. Now greening up, this first course, designed by Arnold Palmer Course Design, will open to the public sometime next month. But in his imagination, J.J. Collins can see it all. On a recent sunny day, the air clear and crisp, Collins walked through an open field covered with pine cones and wildflowers, stopping when he reached a ridgeline with a breathtaking view of the recreation-rich Wenatchee National Forest in the near distance and the Cle Elum River directly below.

	BILL HOOK / SUNCADIA RESORT Suncadia's lodge, as envisioned at left, will feature rustic Northwest architecture and views of the Cle Elum River.

"I think you could chill out well after a hard week's work in Seattle right here," said Collins, an experienced resort executive who recently became Suncadia's vice president of marketing and sales. "I've really come to appreciate the idea of a change of pace," he added.

Indeed, that's what Collins says Suncadia is selling. A chance for Puget Sound residents to easily get away at a getaway offering skiing and ice skating in the cold months, golf and fishing in the warm months, and hiking year-round. (Provided it's on snowshoes when the snow falls.) And those are just a few of the dozen or so activities planned.

Seed planted as MountainStar

More information On the Web: www.suncadia.com

When it was first envisioned years ago, Suncadia was called MountainStar, and the emphasis was on timeshares. Now, with wrangles with environmentalists and local "no-growth" residents seemingly in its past, the plan has morphed into a massive development that may have 3,785 single-family homes, cabins and condominiums when it's completed nine years from now.

"I'm not sure we're going to get to that because of the carrying capacity of the land," says Collins. Some 60 percent of Suncadia will be kept as open space, including a 1,215-acre nature conservancy along both sides of the Cle Elum River's six-mile meander through the property.

"The emphasis on environment is what people are looking for," Collins says, and Suncadia intends to deliver that — even limiting the amount of grass homeowners may plant. "The idea is to leave as many trees as possible and don't lawn out to the edges," he explains. "The grass issue is important because that isn't the look we want."

Built on a site formerly owned by Plum Creek Timber, Suncadia is now the joint partnership of Oregon window and door manufacturer JELD-WEN and Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises. Lowe counts Sunriver among its $1.7 billion in hotel and resort assets. Others include San Diego's landmark Hotel del Coronado and resorts in South Carolina and Hawaii.

When property sales officially open this week, on the block will be home sites in the first of Suncadia's three phases. (Some lots already have been sold to buyers who contacted the resort when it was still called MountainStar.) Phase 1 also includes a public golf course and a 20-acre village that will sport a massive lodge, private and rental condominiums, shopping, restaurants, a conference center, spa and a man-made lake.

Collins says these first home sites range from quarter acres starting at $125,000 to over $400,000 for three-fourths of an acre. Working from a thick book of design guidelines that mandate acceptable architectural styles and finish details, buyers may then hire their own team to fashion their dream homes. Turnkey, Collins expects buyers probably will have a minimum of $450,000 invested. Alternately, some prebuilt homes will be available.

(The next phase will be a gated community called Tumblecreek. It will have its own private golf course; home sites there may have prices in the $300,000-$700,000 range, although that remains to be decided.)

Year-round residents expected

One who already has purchased a Phase 1 lot adjacent a golf fairway is Seattle financial manager Jim Kieburtz. An outdoors enthusiast and Sunriver fan who's made many trips there, he's familiar with Lowe Enterprises. "All their resorts are really upscale," he says.

	BILL HOOK / SUNCADIA RESORT Illustration of the lodge and village at Suncadia, a four-season resort community being built in Roslyn. One of the three golf courses planned for the site will open next month.

"Seattle is dying for a place like this ... to be able to travel an hour and a half as opposed to six hours to Sunriver," Kieburtz says. "So it's a place you can go on weekends, as opposed to having to make a week of it. It's absolutely gorgeous; people really don't have an idea of it at this point."

Collins expects Suncadia's initial buyers will be state residents with household incomes of $150,000 and up (or with other sizable assets). Many will be second-home buyers looking for a family-gathering spot, he predicts, although it's anticipated that some will make the resort their year-round home. Others may simply buy one of the condos as a rental investment.

By 2014, Suncadia's real-estate value alone is expected to exceed $1 billion in today's dollars, he says. Based on an economic analysis he commissioned, Collins also estimates Suncadia will generate $45 million in local retail and commercial spending over the next five years, plus many millions in local property taxes.

That's music to the ears of Cle Elum mayor and local sausage-company owner Charlie Glondo. "It's going to bring jobs to the area, and that's what we're looking for," he says. After watching several years of ongoing discussion and dissent about the project, including some serious challenges from local environmentalists, Glondo now thinks "more people are in favor of it than not."

As for whether the area can handle the increased development and population, "I'm not sure we have a choice," he says. "We're going to have to work with it and accommodate it. With some working on it, it can be done."

Mixed feelings expressed

But in nearby Roslyn, a former coal-mining town turned TV star thanks to "Northern Exposure," some residents have decidedly different feelings.

"Most of us don't like it because they're tearing down our forest and making this not the nice, small, foresty community we were," says Patty Willis, a waitress at Lefties, a local hangout where talk of Suncadia has been ongoing and mostly negative. "Most of us have been here for generations, and we don't like seeing this happening to it."

Particularly galling to Willis and others was the specter of houses on forested Roslyn Ridge. An agreement was struck recently to preserve that as open space, which pleases her greatly. Still she worries more development means less wildlife. "I used to drive to work every day, and you'd just see elk everywhere. Now you don't."

But even without Suncadia the area has been growing, notes Laurie Lind, a real-estate agent at Cle Elum's RE/MAX Alpine Realty. Many newcomers are congestion-weary Seattleites who can telecommute. Others, including firefighters and pilots, have work schedules that don't require them to commute every day.

Their arrival, plus the planned resort, have led to a record three stoplights in town and some real-estate speculation. "Prices have been going up," Lind says. "I'd classify this as a hot market."

Is that a good thing? Having watched the local timber industry's painful demise more than a decade ago, "It's been a struggle here since logging has seen its day," she says.

With more than 20 years of resort-development experience in such locales as Vail, Colo., Collins has a strong sense of what makes resort communities successful. That's why he has ambitious plans to add all sorts of amenities as Suncadia establishes itself as Washington's first four-season resort.

They include a concert amphitheater, a college partnership for "lifelong learning" classes, wellness programs, maybe a water park for the kids.

"If in 10, 20 years' time Suncadia is known just as a golf community, we've failed," Collins says. "If this place is to succeed as a community, it has to have the community glue that holds it together and makes it an interesting place to be."

And it certainly doesn't hurt, he says, that because of its location, Suncadia is practically guaranteed lots of sunshine.

Elizabeth Rhodes: erhodes@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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