Plans for Frenchman’s Bar Park disc golf course on hold

“We don’t know how that’s going to impact the park and the recreational opportunities just yet,” he said.

The county approved building a disc golf course at the park in 2014; the park’s in the city, but controlled by they county.

Volunteers have been working on designing and planning the course since. Disc golf’s mechanics are largely similar to traditional golf, but instead of knocking a ball into a hole with the fewest strokes, competitors work to toss discs into a metal basket. Outside of the baskets and concrete pads, which work like tee boxes in golf, a course doesn’t need much else.

Dan Friesz, the natural area manager for the new space, said it’s probably too soon to say what, if any, impact park users or people using the nearby trail might notice.

Workers have been out plowing and mowing the property to prepare for planting.

The trust will plant corn varieties with different maturation rates in 50-foot strips with sorghum, alfalfa and peas planted in between, Friesz said.

The idea is to plant grain and cover crops to help sandhill cranes and other migratory birds.

For this year, planting won’t extend north to the where it’s closest to the park, he said. The trust has filed a pre-application with the city to build berms around the property, Friesz said.

When built, they’d be planted with native vegetation to create hedgerows where birds can forage and rest with some seclusion.

He doubted those would be built this year.

As originally conceived, the tournament-quality, 18-hole would have covered about 78 acres, but conservation concerns also led to substantial changes in the course’s design.

Steve Carson, who has been volunteering to help design the course, said previously the course would cost about $12,000 to $15,000, with funds to be raised through donations and sponsorships. Again, that was before the land trust and course redesign.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife joined the planning process, and recommended reducing the course size to nine holes and roughly halving its footprint.

The proposed course would have effected riparian forest area needed for the health of bad eagles and Columbian white-tailed deer.

The agency recommended restricting the course to the field closer to the park’s facilities, as opposed to over a service road and into the next field to the north.

Radio-collared deer have been tracked going into the northern field, which WDFW said a deer-rearing and foraging area.

“If we were to move forward, we were basically going to heed their advice,” Bjerke said, which included season closures for the course for migratory birds and waterfowl.

Volunteers had hoped to start work at Frenchman’s Bar this summer, but Bjerke said the county doesn’t have an expected timeline for what’s next.

In the meantime, Bjerke said, the county is also considering other locations.

Hockinson Meadows Community Park showed promise, he said, although that would require returning to the county council to approve a new plan.

Justifying a new course

One of the county’s justifications for building a disc golf course at Frenchman’s Bar Park stems from the popularity of the course at Leverich Park.

In April 2015, an infrared sensor was placed on the fairway of the seventh hole at the Leverich Park course to help get a sense of course traffic, according to early application material sent to the city (the county runs the park, but it’s on city land).

After supplementing that with a hand count, course planners estimated more than 37,000 people use the Leverich Park course annually.

The Leverich Park course has been open for more than six years. Organizers and planners said they expected about 12,400 annual users at the Frenchman’s Bar course, initially.

It’s a bit of a drive to Frenchman’s Bar for most people, so planners expect course usage, even at its peak, will be a little lower than at Leverich Park’s course.