A new 14,000-square-foot clubhouse building and three 4-bedroom suite buildings are under construction at the Erin Hills golf course in the Town of Erin in Washington County.
The buildings were designed by Brown Deer-based Wade Weissmann Architecture. The construction management firm for the project is Brown Deer-based Ruvin Bros. Artisans & Traders Inc.
The project is the latest in improvements to the course since it was purchased by Andrew Ziegler, co-founder and managing partner of Milwaukee-based Artisan Partners, from the original developer, Robert Lang.
Erin Hills is a championship caliber golf course and will be the host site for the 2011 U.S. Amateur and the 2017 U.S. Open. However, the course and its facilities needed to be upgraded in order to host major golf tournaments.
The new clubhouse building will provide a large space for a championship tournament locker room, said Tony Enea, owner of Ruvin Bros.
The existing clubhouse building at Erin Hills has about 12,000 to 13,000 square feet of space, two small locker rooms, a pub, a pro shop, a few meeting/dining rooms and 16 guest suites. The locker rooms in that building were not adequate to host championship golf tournaments.
“(Ziegler) needed a championship locker room,” Enea said. “The ones they had were too small. You couldn’t possibly have 100 golfers using the facility. It just wouldn’t have worked.”
When the course is not hosting golf tournaments, the large locker room in the new building will be converted into a restaurant dining room.
“You could be eating dinner where Tiger Woods tied his shoes,” Enea said.
The new building will also have office space on the second floor. Currently some of the suites in the existing clubhouse building are used for the golf course’s offices.
The three four-bedroom suite buildings will be clustered around the new clubhouse building, creating a village feel, Enea said. Ziegler eventually plans to build 16 of the suite buildings at the course.
Ruvin Bros., which specializes in high end home projects but also does light commercial projects, also did the construction work for the Harbor House restaurant, which was a dramatic reconstruction of the former Pieces of Eight restaurant building on Milwaukee’s lakefront.
