Repair or replace? Charles City Parks & Rec Board looks at options for Wildwood Golf Course clubhouse

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Members of the Charles City Parks and Recreation Board got a close look at problems at the Wildwood Golf Course clubhouse during the board’s meeting Wednesday evening, which was held at the 100-year-old structure.

It was raining at the time, so the inspection was limited to the inside of the building, but even that may have convinced board members that repairing the building is not a cost-effective option.

“Thanks for ruining our day,” said Parks & Rec Board member Diane Meyer. “It’s way worse than I thought.”

Brian Young, of Young Construction, who said he has done work on the clubhouse over the years and examined it closely, led the tour, along with golf course manager Joel Bruner.

Bruner said the city had budgeted $50,000 to do siding work on the building a couple of years ago, but when a contractor looked at it he said that wouldn’t cover the cost of even one wall, because all the windows would have to be replaced, too.

Young said, “The windows are all rotted. There’s a lot of rot in this building. All the wood exterior trim is rotten. To just side it does no physical good. You’re just putting a cover over something that’s already bad.”

Many of the problems are with the central ballroom, which Bruner said is a popular venue for events such as wedding receptions and graduation parties.

Young said one of the main problems is there is no real foundation under the building. Large beams support the structure, but those beams are resting on supports that sit directly on the ground, with no footings under them.

Some of those beams have rot in them and some have shifted, causing the building to go out of square and resulting in problems with doors and windows and even the four exposed main rafters in the ballroom, which he said have stress fractures in them from shifting pressures where they are attached to the walls.

Young said the clubhouse is “a beautiful building,” but it was never built to the specifications a modern year-round building would be.

There is no insulation in the building and the water pipes run through a crawl space, so they have to be drained to avoid freezing in the winter. The boards that make up the exterior siding in the ballroom are also the interior wall.

Young said a renovation of the building to keep it for the future would probably require all new siding, new windows and doors, repairs on the roof and other major work – essentially replacing the entire shell of at least the ballroom – but the main problem is the lack of a foundation.

He said he didn’t know if it would even be possible to raise or support the building to build a foundation under it.

Young said there are problems with the rest of the building, too, which includes the pro shop and bar and other areas used mostly for storage.

Bruner said, “We need to paint. It looks terrible out there, but do you repaint rotten wood? …Where do you start and where do you end?

“I personally love this place,” Bruner said. “I’ve been here 20 years and it’s got a lot of historical value and it means a lot to me, but I deal with it every day. … It’s embarrassing seeing what’s happening, what other people see when they come here.”

Some members of the Parks & Rec Board have expressed a desire to preserve the building because of its historical significance, but that desire may have been tempered after looking at the clubhouse’s condition  up close.

The entire golf course is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as the Wildwood Park Historic District. The National Register listing says the clubhouse construction was completed in 1928 and was once used to house prisoners of war during World War II.

Being listed on the registry doesn’t prevent the city from doing whatever it wants with the building, however.

The State Historic Preservation Office of Iowa states, “No federal or state of Iowa regulations prohibit owners from altering, renovating, remodeling or even destroying their listed properties unless the project uses federal money, licenses, or permits or state funds through grants or tax credits.”

Jeff Otto, Parks & Rec Board president, said, “Things have just gotten to a point where we need to put a lot of money into it or find an alternative solution.”

Board member Chris Eldridge asked how many golf seasons would go by without a clubhouse if they decided to build a new one.

Bruner said probably not any, because they would likely consider building a new clubhouse farther up on a nearby hill.

Mayor Dean Andrews said even if they did rebuild on the same spot, “you could get by with a trailer for a season.”

Board members briefly discussed what size and occupancy capacity they would want to see in a new clubhouse, and said an obvious priority would be making it usable year-round, but made no decisions at the meeting Wednesday.

Tyler Mitchell, the Charles City Parks and Recreation Department director, told the board that now that all the members have an idea of what the problems are with the clubhouse, they can move forward developing a plan.

Phoebe Pittman, the City Council liaison to the board, said the hardest part of building a new clubhouse will be convincing the community how bad the condition of the current clubhouse really is, and she suggested taking pictures and recording measurements to show how the problems are continuing to grow.

“We’ll take pictures and we’ll do that,” Mitchell said.