4 years after Tubbs fire, Fountaingrove Club’s new clubhouse almost complete

The gleaming new clubhouse had not officially opened: that milestone, at the Fountaingrove Club in northeast Santa Rosa, is planned for Tuesday.

But someone forgot to tell that to the five guys posted up at the club’s new bar late Tuesday afternoon, laughing up a storm, seemingly oblivious to the barking of a small dog that belonged to one of them.

The bar is not technically open, explained the club’s general manager, Russ Bond, with a tight smile. A limited number of people had been invited for lunch and dinner, in order to help the new staff get things figured out before Tuesday’s official opening.

One could hardly blame the gentlemen at the bar for a bit of premature jubilation. This unveiling has been a long time coming. The private, member-owned Fountaingrove Club found itself directly in the path of the 2017 Tubbs fire. While the golf course and “athletic center,” or workout facility, came through that inferno relatively unscathed — other than the 1,000 or so trees damaged or lost — the 25,000-square-foot clubhouse was leveled.

Since then, club members have been “roughing it” in temporary facilities.

Four years and two months after the fire, a replacement clubhouse has risen. The new building, which cost close to $20 million, said Bond, is slightly smaller than its predecessor, at just over 20,000 square feet. It features a golf shop, office space, meeting rooms, two dining venues and a pair of outdoor dining terraces.

Bill and Rene Rubach, who are the club’s longest-tenured members — they’ve been coming here since 1987 — got their first look inside the new clubhouse Tuesday.

“This is so MODERN, compared to the old one,” noted Rene. Both gave the project a thumbs up — which was easier to do, said Bill in a slightly conspiratorial tone, “because nobody really liked the old one.”

Their house, which backed up to the fairway of the first hole, was also lost. When a neighbor knocked on their door early on the morning of October 9, 2017, “the wind damn near blew me over,” recalled Rubach, a retired oral surgeon.

In the 10 minutes they had to gather belongings, Bill recalled, “I grabbed my passport, my iPad, my checkbook, my vodka, and realized I’d forgotten Rene!”

If her eye roll was any indication, this was not the first time she’d heard that joke.

After moving to Santa Rosa in 1965 and opening his practice, Rubach became friends with the cartoonist Charles Schulz. The two played many rounds of golf together, often against comedian Tommy Smothers and his friend.

Looking down on the 18th green Tuesday, Rubach remembered the day his ball sat on the edge of the green. “If you can get up in down in 2, we’ve got ‘em,” the cartoonist informed him. They’d made their usual friendly wager with Smothers: one dollar was at stake.

When Rubach missed the 3-foot putt, the notoriously competitive Schulz glared at him, then said, “YOU pay ’em,” recalled Rubach, laughing.

A week or so later, Schulz apologized, sort of. “Bill,” he said, “I overreacted a little. I want to give you that dollar back.”

With that, Schulz placed 10 dimes in his friend’s hand, one at a time.

The new clubhouse was conceived by San Francisco-based BAR Architects, which describes on its website how the designers sought to use “natural materials crafted with minimal detailing” to embrace the surrounding landscape “with understated elegance.”

As of Tuesday, the clubhouse appeared to be about 98% complete. Members could identify their lockers by the green tape, on which their names had been written in Sharpie.

The tape wouldn’t be there long, membership coordinator Melanie Bartlett assured a reporter. “They’ll have engraved name plates.”

While membership numbers dipped, in the wake of the Tubbs fire, they’ve since rallied strongly. Two years ago, the club had 244 golf members. Two months ago, said Bond, that number was close to the club’s cap of 368 — despite having to make do with a temporary restaurant and temporary pro shop.

“But people believed in the dream, and they signed up.”

The club conducted tours of the new building last weekend. Member feedback was positive, “to a person,” said Bond.

After losing their Fountaingrove home in the blaze, members Howard Lasker and his wife Debbie moved to Healdsburg. Sorely missing the community they felt at the Fountaingrove Club, but unable to make the drive most weekdays, they visited “religiously on weekends,” he said.

Scott Butler, who manages the club’s athletic center — and who lost his condo in the blaze — worked ‘round the clock, with other club employees, to clean and repair that facility, which became a kind of refuge for members who’d lost their homes.

“It was a place we could shower, and get food supplies,” said Lasker, who remains deeply grateful for that support.

Since 2005, he and Debbie had been members of only the club’s athletic center. Inspired by the bonds they’d forged at the club, with members and employees alike, and impressed by “the vision management was creating,” they recently signed up to become golf members as well.

“They have been tremendous to us,” said Lasker.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.